Preface 



by an asterisk placed before the date. The full titles of these papers will be 

 given in the continuation of the Catalogue of Authors. 



When an author's personal name does not appear in the original heading 

 of a paper, no attempt has been made to find the name for the Index ; but 

 this will be done for the Catalogue of Authors. 



Entries on the same subject are arranged, so far as possible, in order 

 of date irrespective of the authors' names, with the endeavour to present 

 the subject in the historical form. This grouping of the entries, involving 

 modifications of titles prepared by different Referees, or by the same Referee 

 at different times, has been one of the most difficult problems in the prepara- 

 tion of the Index. 



The abbreviations used in the Royal Society Catalogue for the names 

 of the serials have been further shortened for the Index. As the abbrevia- 

 tions are not uniform in all the volumes, it will be found that the same 

 journal may be indicated by several different abbreviations ; but in each case 

 the one selected is that which was used in the volume in which the title of 

 the paper occurs. 



In the case of serials commencing since 1883, the abbreviations adopted 

 in the International Catalogue have been used as a guide. 



The list of serials will, as in the case of Pure Mathematics, be a valuable 

 feature of the Index. It contains the names of 1261 serials from which the 

 entries in the Index have been taken. Each title is preceded by the abbrevia- 

 tion which represents the serial in the Index ; the date of commencement of 

 the serial is given, and if it is extinct the date of the last volume is added. 

 There are appended symbols representing the names of thirty British 

 Libraries in some of which the serials may be found ; where the set is 

 incomplete the symbol is followed by i. The information from which this 

 list has been compiled was obtained, in the first instance, from published 

 catalogues ; subsequently the list was submitted to the custodians of many 

 of the libraries, who kindly marked many serials which had not been found 

 in the catalogues used. The thanks of the Committee for this valuable 

 assistance are due to Mr F. Jenkinson of the Cambridge University Library, 

 the late Mr E. W. B. Nicholson and Mr F. Madan of the Bodleian Library, 

 the Librarian of the Radcliffe Library, the Librarian of the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Society, Mr F. W. Clifford of the Chemical Society, to Mr R. 

 Lioyd Praeger for obtaining information from the five Libraries in Dublin, 



