ON ZOOLOGICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY AND PUBLICATION. 239 



Zoological Bibliography and Publication. — Report of the Com- 

 mittee, consisting of Professor E. B. Poulton {Chairman), 

 Dr. F. A. Bather (Secretary), and Drs. W. E. Hoyle and 

 P. Chalmers Mitchell. 



This Committee represents the resuscitation of a Committee first 

 appointed in 1895, with Sir W. H. Flower as Chairman and Dr. 

 Bather as Secretary. That Committee reported in 1896 and 1897, and 

 its Eeports, in which a number of suggestions were made for the 

 guidance of authors and editors, were widely distributed. Although 

 the request of the Committee for reappointment with a small grant 

 was not acceded to, its Secretary has continued to distribute those 

 Reports, as well as a circular issued by the Committee, and has con- 

 ducted correspondence arising therefrom. Whether or no it be in 

 consequence of the action taken by the Committee of 1895 and thus 

 continued, there can be no doubt as to the greater attention now paid 

 by most publishing bodies to the points mentioned in the previous 

 Reports. Others, however, have not yet fallen into line, and new 

 publications, started without experience, fall into the old errors. For 

 these reasons and also because the coiTespondence shows that interest 

 in the subject tends to increase, this fresh Committee has been 

 appointed, so as to reinvest the suggestions with their original 

 authority, and to deal with any inquiries that may arise. 



During the past year copies of the circular have been sent to the 

 editors of two societies with satisfactory results, and several inquiries 

 have been answered, especially from the Geological Society of Glasgow. 



Method of making References to Previous Literature. 



One of these inquiries related to this subject, which also was dis- 

 cussed in the pages of Science for October 1 and November 12, 1915. 

 On this matter the Committee begs to offer the following suggestions : 



The question is : "What is the best way in which the author of a 

 paper can introduce references to the works which he quotes or other- 

 wise alludes to? No single method suits all cases. At the outset a 

 distinction must be drawn between two classes of papers : first, brief 

 articles, in which the references are correspondingly few and rarely 

 repeated; secondly, long articles or memoirs, in which the references 

 are correspondingly numerous and frequently repeated. 



In articles of the first class, references may quite easily be worked 

 into the text, and can be repeated by giving the cited author's name, 

 with a distinguishing date when more than one of his works has been 

 mentioned. This is more economical of time, space, and money than 

 footnotes, and is far less fruitful of error than the irritating ibid. 

 and loc. cit., often used by writers who apparently do not know 

 what the contractions really mean. 



For memoirs of the second class, it is more convenient for both 

 author and reader to have, either at the end or at the beginning of the 



