150 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



belong in the same class according to our intellectual systems, 

 and which he must discover as they lie scattered, unclassified, 

 and, all too often, concealed. In passing, let me add that one 

 reason for the increase in number of biological articles is the 

 change in the publication habits of the present as compared 

 with those of a generation ago. Formerly the preparation of 

 long and thorough monographs was the goal of ambitious 

 investigators, but now it is the fashion to publish instead a 

 succession of short papers. How new this tendency is you 

 will appreciate easily by remembering that we have now a 

 goodly number of journals devoted exclusively to very short 

 papers, such as the Zoologischer Anzeiger, Botanisches Central- 

 blatt, Bibliographic Anatomique, and many more, all of which 

 date back only a very few years. They represent a class of 

 scientific serials which twenty-five years ago was almost, if 

 not quite, unknown. 



It will be the main purpose of this lecture to point out the 

 resources we have for finding the literature of a given bio- 

 logical theme. Before beginning this task let us consider 

 briefly what a biological author may do to facilitate making a 

 satisfactory bibliographical record of an article of his own. 

 We may leave apart the literary and scientific qualities of the 

 article, not because we fail to assign them their due prime 

 importance, but only because we are looking at the matter 

 from the narrower point of view of the bibliographer. Now, 

 from this standpoint there are five points which seem to me to 

 deserve special attention. 



i. The title, which should be as brief as possible and never- 

 theless indicate the contents. I recently noted an article 

 entitled A Reply after Two Years. Under what head will 

 you enter it ? When you read it you will discover that it deals 

 with the embryology of turtles. Such a title is unpardonable, 

 for it will cause quite unnecessary trouble to hundreds, per- 

 haps thousands of people. It is quite as bad as the bugbear 

 title of the medical bibliographer, A Rare Case. There are 

 thousands of articles on that subject, but what is it ? asks the 

 despairing recorder. For brevity of title it is surely unneces- 

 sary to plead. Every one who has had to cite authorities 



