i8g6. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 79 



manner of publication, for which the system adopted by the Biblio- 

 graphical Bureau for Zoology is warmly advocated. It is, we 

 suppose, probable that, with regard to the subject-index, the claims of 

 Decimal Classification on the Dewey plan will be strongly urged, 

 although we understand that the authorities of the Royal Society are 

 themselves unfavourable to the scheme. Whether it meets with a 

 welcome at the Conference will doubtless depend on the number of 

 practical bibliographers and experienced cataloguers whose presence 

 has been invited. If the Decimal method be adopted, the work of 

 classification in the subject-index will be enormously facilitated, and 

 if the example of Natural Science and the Revue Scientifique be 

 followed by other publications, the work might be entrusted to 

 the very young ladies who have lately been invading the public 

 scientific libraries of London on behalf of the Royal Society's Cata- 

 logue. We believe, however, that another system, more understanded 

 of the people, though more cumbrous and less certain, has lately been 

 proposed by the Royal Society. This is that short abstracts, or 

 detailed contents, of the contained papers should be inserted in each 

 issue of a periodical. To this end certain societies have, we under- 

 stand, been approached. Anything that will aid research is to be 

 welcomed ; but it may be pointed out that an abstract in French or 

 Japanese, though more readily intelligible (in France or in Japan), is 

 not so universally intelligible as the Decimal Index-number will, it is 

 thought, before long become. Moreover, if the Conference decides to 

 adopt the latter system, already in work in a large number of libraries 

 and bibliographic centres, then the Central Office, when it begins its 

 own labours, will be able, without friction, to use those of the many 

 disinterested toilers in the same field. 



We have made one or two suggestions, because suggestions are 

 sought ; and it is possible that those made by practical journalists, 

 who have devoted much study to the subject, may be as valuable as 

 those made by scientific investigators. In any case, this attempt is 

 so great and so important that it is the duty of everyone who has 

 seriously considered the question to speak out his honest opinion, 

 without waiting till he is asked for it. 



Sir Joseph Prestwich. 

 In the New Year's list of honours no award could have given 

 greater pleasure to men of science than the knighthood conferred on 

 the doyen of British geologists. Prestwich's first geological paper 

 was read in 1834, and he is still writing. Before 1840 he -had made 

 his mark by discoveries of fish remains in Banffshire, and by a 

 masterly monograph on the Coalbrookdale coalfield. His series of 

 papers on the Tertiary deposits of the London and Hampshire 

 basins, issued in 1 846-1 847, placed him in the front rank of British 

 geologists ; they settled for ever the main facts in the correlation of 

 these deposits, and the accuracy of the observations has never been 



