PROVISIONAL REPORTS. 463 



Report of a Committee appointed by " The British Association for the 



Advancement of Science," to consider the formation of a Catalogue 



of Philosophical Memoirs. 

 The Committee were appointed — on the occasion of a communication from 

 Professor Henry of Washington, containing a proposal for the publication 

 of Philosophical Memoirs scattered throughout the Transactions of Societies 

 in Europe and America, with the offer of cooperation on the part of the 

 Smithsonian Institute, to the extent of preparing and publishing, in accord- 

 ance with the general plan which might be adopted by the British Associa- 

 tion, a catalogue of all the American Memoirs on Physical Science — to con- 

 sider the best system of arrangement, and to report thereon to the Council. 



The Committee are desirous of expressing their sense of the great im- 

 portance and increasing need of such a catalogue. 



They understand the proposal of the Smithsonian Institute to be, that a 

 separate catalogue should be prepared and published for America. 



In the opinion of the Committee,^- 



The Catalogue should embrace the Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 

 but should exclude Natural History and Physiology, Geology, Mineralogy, 

 and Chemistry, which would propei'ly form the subject-matter of a distinct 

 catalogue or catalogues. The difficulty of drawing the line would perhaps be 

 greatest with regard to Chemistry and Gfeology ; but the Committee would 

 admit into the Catalogue memoirs not purely Chemical or Geological, but 

 having a direct bearing upon the subjects of the Catalogue. 



The Catalogue should not be restricted to memoirs in Transactions of 

 Societies, but should comprise also memoirs in the Proceedings of Societies, 

 in Mathematical and Scientific Journals, in Ephemerides and volumes of 

 Observations, and in other collections not coming under any of the preceding 

 heads. The Catalogue would not comprise separate works. 



The Catalogue should begin from the year 1800. 



There should be a catalogue according to the names of authors, and also 

 a catalogue according to subjects ; the title of the memoir, date, and other 

 particulars to be in each case given in full, so as to avoid the necessity of a 

 reference from the one catalogue to the other. 



The Catalogue should, in referring to a memoir, give the number as well 

 of the last as of the first page, so as to show the length of the memoir. 



The Catalogue should give in eveiy case the date of a memoir (the year 

 only), namely, in the case of memoirs published in the Transactions of a 

 Society, the date of reading, and in other cases the date on the title-page of 

 the volume. Such date should be inserted as a distinct fact, even in the case 

 of a volume of transactions referred to by its date. 



The Catalogue should contain a list of volumes indexed, showing the com- 

 plete title ; in the case of transactions, the year to which the volume belongs, 

 and the year of publication ; and in other cases, the year of publication, and 

 the abbreviated reference to the work. 



The references to works should be given in a form sufficiently full to be 

 easily intelligible without turning to the explanation of such reference. 



The author's name and the date should be printed in a distinctive type, so 

 as to be conspicuous at first sight ; and generally the typographical execution 

 should be such as to facilitate as much as possible the use of the Catalogue. 



As to the Catalogue according to the authors' names, the memoirs of the 

 same author should be arranged according to their dates. 



As to the Catalogue according to subjects, the question of the arrange- 

 ment is one of very great difficulty. It appears to the Committee that the 

 scheme of arrangement canaot be fixed upon according to any a priori 



