BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Ornithologists have become slaves to the established system of bibliographical 

 citation, under which it is the custom to cite the original authority for every fact 

 quoted, with the date of publication of his work, full title of the paper, the correct 

 abbreviation of the title of the journal according to the World List of Scientific Periodi- 

 cals, etc., etc. As a result various scholarly and admirable books have become 

 adorned with super-bibliographies the publication of which must have increased 

 the setting cost of the books by at least ten per cent., sometimes by several hundreds 

 of pounds. These bibliographies certainly show that the author has taken the trouble 

 to go to original sources for his information, and make it very easy for other scholars 

 to tread the same paths: they also, of course, give credit where it is due. Thus the 

 bibliography of E. A. Armstrong (1947) contains about a thousand citations, occupy- 

 ing 38 pages in smallish type; that of J. Huxley (1942) nearly a thousand, occupying 

 35 P^ges; that of R. C. Murphy (1936) about a thousand occupying 32 double- 

 column pages; that of F. Salomonsen (1950-51), admittedly selective, over five 

 hundred occupying 18 double-column pages. If Fisher (1952) had published his 

 full formal bibliography of the fulmar he would have quoted 2,378 works; if cited 

 in full in smaller type than the main text of the book these would have occupied 

 about 125 pages; in the smallest possible type between sixty and seventy pages. 



In the course of writing this book we have consulted about five thousand original 

 notes, papers and books; our resulting collection of slips is nevertheless only a 

 practical, working bibliography of the sea-birds of the North Atlantic. If we were 

 to expand it to a complete bibliography we should doubtless end up with at least 

 ten thousand entries, even if we rigidly confined them to purely scientific publica- 

 tions. If we were to publish it as it is it might be of use to a few scholars who probably 

 know more about the literature than we do; but it would certainly increase the 

 price of this book beyond the reach of those for whom we intend it! 



We have therefore confined our bibliography generally to classic publications 

 which (in our opinion) represent important stages in the development of human 

 knowledge of North Atlantic sea-birds, and to publications particularly relevant to 

 facts in the text which (in our judgment) are not common knowledge or which are 

 based on research or observation of particular interest or originality. The whole 

 bibliography is thus selected by subjective judgment; and disappointed scholars 

 are cordially invited to correspond with us if thus frustrated. 



We would like to take the opportunity to add that, in our opinion, the time has 

 come for all bibliographies to works of zoological synthesis to be selective. No 

 historian today, writer of a history book of the rarest degree of specification, would 

 attempt to quote the original source for every fact. But many zoological writers 

 rudely interrupt their own text with cross-references to bulky triumphs of slip-index 



