of publication appears on separates, the exact date often is very useful 

 when dealing with the nomenclature of older names. Consequently, I have 

 expended considerable time and effort in establishing exact dates when- 

 ever possible. In some cases this was simple, since many of the recent 

 papers had the dates printed on the separates, but more often than not 

 some digging was necessary. 



It was difficult to establish dates for earlier papers and in some 

 cases it was not possible. The earliest volumes of the Proceedings were 

 published by '"signatures" of varying numbers of pages. Often the end of 

 a given signature did not coincide with the end of a paper, so portions 

 of one paper were published on one date and the remainder of the same 

 paper may have appeared several months later. In these cases I have 

 attempted to give inclusive dates for the entire paper, although the 

 annotations for some signatures were very confusing. 



At the back of the table of contents in Proceedings volumes 9-11, 

 there is an explanation that the articles were "stereotyped" on the date 

 at the bottom of the signature page but that the actual date of publication 

 for each signature is given in the front of the volume. In these cases 

 both the "stereotyped" date and the later "published" date are given, with 

 the latter assumed to be the correct date of publication. Unfortunately, 

 there is no indication if the same situation obtained with volumes 1-8 and 

 a search of the records in the Smithsonian Archives and Press does not 

 clarify the problem. Consequently, the signature dates are regarded as 

 publication dates for volumes 1-8; it should be emphasized that some doubt 

 exists and that additional data in the future could modify these dates. 



Starting with Volume 12, each article was individually printed and 

 the date of publication was more firmly established. These dates appeared 

 in the Table of Contents for each volume, issued at the end of the year 

 for inclusion in the bound set in the Smithsonian main library. From 

 Volume 32 to Volume 54, dates of publication appeared on the cover of 

 separates from the Proceedings ; these dates were verified by cross-checking 

 with the dates in the tables of contents. 



A similarly chaotic system was used for the earlier Miscellaneous 

 Collections ; as a consequence, the Advertisement page for Volume 2, no. V 

 lists 1862 as the date of publication but the various articles therein are 

 dated from 1852 to 1862. Specifically, the Baird & Girard Catalogue (art. 

 49) has January 1853 on the cover and this date is verified in Baird' s 

 (see Bull. 20) and Girard 's (Bull. 41) bibliographies. 



The later Miscellaneous Collections followed much the same format 

 as the Proceedings and dates were determined from the tables of contents. 

 In some cases the "Quarterly Issue" Miscellaneous Collections were dupli- 

 cated in the regular series. In the first edition of this list the 

 "Quarterly Issue" numbers were listed separately and several titles were 

 included incorrectly. I have attempted to minimize confusion by listing 

 all under Miscellaneous Collections and using the earliest publication 

 date when a paper appeared in both "series". 



