stracts would save his time as an abstractor 

 at home and abroad. For abstract journals 

 are recognized to be such useful, almost in- 

 dispensable guides to scientific literature that 

 most sciences have one or more in each of the 

 great scientific languages. At present, then, 

 most of the articles in the fields of astronomy, 

 physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine are 

 abstracted from three to six times each, while 

 if an abstract suitable for reprinting in an ab- 

 stract journal were prefixed to each original 

 article, a reabstracting of the article would 

 be unnecessary and much duplication of effort 

 would be avoided. Moreover the practise would 

 enable abstract journals to report current lit- 

 erature with less delay than at present. 



But to render this service to scientists, the 

 abstracts must, as stated above, adequately de- 

 scribe and summarize the contents of the 

 articles. The standard must not only be 

 high; it must be uniform, so that the ab- 

 stracts may be beyond suspicion of incomplete- 

 ness and inaccuracy. 



During 1920 the ISTational Eesearch Council 

 devoted considerable attention to various ques- 

 tions relating to abstracts, such as: how they 

 might be improved in form so as to render 

 more effective service; how the rules might 

 be made more definite and the method of prep- 

 aration more systematic so as to result in 

 more uniformly good abstracts. As a result 

 of study and experimentation a type of ab- 

 stract was developed which is believed to be 

 well suited to the needs both of abstract jour- 

 nals and of scientific journals with prelimi- 

 nary abstracts. 



Abstracts of this type; which are called 

 analytic abstracts, have been appearing in the 

 Astrophy steal Journal and, less consistently, in 

 the Physical Review since January, 1920. 

 Their main characteristics are illustrated in 

 the following samples. 



