Periodical Works on Natural History. 301 
genera and species.* To use a common proverb, it would be 
like ** searching for a needle in a pottle of hay,” to look for a 
plant among the fifty-six volumes of the Botanical Magazine, 
were it not for the assistance of the general index, without 
which the work would be little better than a confused medley 
of sweets, rudis indigestaque moles, possessing, indeed, an 
abundance of rich and valuable stores, of which, however, we 
could only, with labour and difficulty, avail ourselves in time 
of need. 
Turn we now to the positive unmixed disadvantages of the 
periodical system. Of these, some are such as may, and 
therefore ought, to be avoided; others are inevitable, and 
therefore must be patiently endured. To the latter class may 
be referred the risk which the purchaser always incurs of 
having a work, on which he has expended a large sum, left 
incomplete on his hands. Many are the instances in point 
which might be mentioned: instances of works birth-strangled 
as it were, dying suddenly a premature death, or, at least, 
stopping short without being finished, and thus reminding one 
fs) . . 
of the Hudibrastic distich, 
* The adventure of the bear and fiddle 
Is sung, but breaks off in the middle.” 
Perhaps the author himself dies: his work, of course, is discon- 
tinued ; or, at all events, it falls into other, probably less able, 
hands. The newly appointed editor, the wet nurse, as he may 
be called, of the publication, is perhaps precluded, by the very 
nature of the case, from the possibility of giving to the work 
that character and stamp of excellence which the genuine parent 
had done, and would have continued to do, almost without an 
effort. Who can doubt that Dr. Sibthorp’s Flora Gre*ca 
would have more completely realised the author’s plan, had 
he lived to publish it himself? And yet, it is but justice to 
say, that, after his death, the materials were intrusted for pub- 
lication to the care of Sir J. E. Smith, the plates to be exe- 
cuted by Mr. Sowerby ; of all others, perhaps, the two most 
fitting persons that could have been selected for the purpose. 
* Many periodical works on botany, &c., when once brought to a conclu- 
sion, may be bound up, not in the order of publication, but : sy stematically, 
according to some scientific arrangement. Having myself had Sowerby’s 
English Botany bound up after the Linnean system, I find the work, in this 
state, far more convenient to refer to; and, consequently, refer to it now 
ten times, perhaps, for once that I should have done had the subjects re- 
mained in the order of publication, and the different species of a genus been 
laboriously to be sought for as they lay scattered up and down through 
thirty-six volumes. Such persons as may happen to have a copy in num- 
bers, or in boards, I would strongly recommend to adopt this or some similar 
plan. 
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