CLASSIFICATION. 405 



arrangement of the spare copies. In the ' English Cyclo- 

 paedia' it is suggested that twenty copies of the book titles 

 might readily have been utilized in forming additional 

 catalogues, arranged according to the place of publication, 

 the language of the Book, the general nature of the sub- 

 ject, and so forth e . 



It will hardly be a digression to point out the enormous 

 saving of labour, or, what comes to the same thing, the 

 enormous increase in our available knowledge, both lite- 

 rary and scientific, which arises from the formation of ex- 

 tensive indices. The ' State Papers/ containing the whole 

 history of the nation, were practically sealed to literary 

 inquirers until the Government undertook the task of 

 calendaring and indexing them. The British Museum 

 Catalogue is another national work, of which the im- 

 portance in advancing knowledge cannot be overrated. 

 The Royal Society is accomplishing a work of world-wide 

 importance, in publishing a complete catalogue of memoirs 

 upon physical science. The time will perhaps come when 

 our views upon this subject will be extended, and either 

 Government or some public society will undertake the 

 systematic cataloguing and indexing of masses of his- 

 torical and scientific information which are now almost 

 closed against inquiry. 



Classification in the Biological Sciences. 



The great generalizations established in the works of 

 Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin have thrown great 

 light upon many other sciences, and, strange as it may 

 seem to say so, they have removed several difficulties out 

 of the way of the logician. The subject of classification 

 has long been studied in almost exclusive reference to the 



e 'English Cyclopaedia/ 'Arts and Sciences/ vol. v. p. 233. 



