1893. ] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 5 
brace the widest range of pure and applied chemistry. Perhaps 
the American Chemical Society will lead in this enterprise, and 
then the older and more conservative societies of Europe might 
follow. One stimulus that would eventually influence them is 
national pride. 
So far this plan relates only to current literature, and some 
provision must be made for indexing the enormous accumula- 
tion of material already in print. Probably there is no better 
way to attack this problem than to prepare a subject-index to 
the chemistry contained in the Catalogue of Scientific Papers 
published under the auspices of the Royal Society. This monu- 
mental work loses much of its value owing to the lack of a 
subject-index, and it is deeply to be regretted that there is no 
prospect of one being compiled, if at least one may judge from the 
correspondence on this subject printed in the pages of Nature. 
And here allow me to place on record a fact bearing on the 
question ; a few years ago a member of the Committee on In- 
dexing Chemical Literature of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science, already known to the scientific 
world by his labors in bibliography, decided to undertake the 
preparation of a subject-index to the chemistry and physics in 
the eight quarto volumes of the work named, but before doing 
so wrote a courteous letter to the Secretary of the Royal Society 
announcing his scheme. In that letter the gentleman explained 
that he planned to compile the subject-index and to print it 
entirely without expense or liability on the part of the Royal 
Society. After a long lapse of time the gentleman received a 
note from the Secretary of the Royal Society stating that the 
matter had been laid before the Council and they had refused 
permission to have such an index prepared! Thus rebuffed, my 
friend abandoned his scheme and turned his attention to another 
task. 
In spite of this attitude of the Council of the Royal Society, 
I believe a regularly constituted committee of chemists could 
secure permission, if, indeed, any be necessary. 
Details of methods to be pursued cannot here be considered ; 
they could be formulated by a committee. 
A general bibliography of chemistry has been recently at- 
tempted by the writer of this communication; the results form 
a volume of over twelve hundred pages just issued by the Smith- 
sonian Institution as No. 850 of the series entitled Miscellaneous 
Collections. This ‘Select Bibliography of Chemistry, 1492— 
1892” embraces about twelve thousand titles in twenty-four 
languages, yet makes no claim to completeness ; it is, moreover, 
a bibliography, not an index. 
