64 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



recorded. The burden of publication has fallen, therefore, heavily on 

 the societies dealing with chemistry, and more particularly on the Chemical 

 Society, which is the chief means by which, through its Journal, new 

 knowledge is published to the world. 



The remedy is not obvious. The societies caimot increase their 

 subscriptions without inviting loss of membership. Neither does it seem 

 that much is to be gained by amalgamation, because each society deals 

 with some branch of chemistry, and there is little or no overlapping or 

 duplication. Amalgamation of the societies would not, therefore, 

 decrease the costs of publication nor materially diminish the subscriptions 

 necessary to meet these costs. 



You cannot curtail papers beyond the point which enables the work 

 described to be repeated, otherwise publication is valueless. You cannot 

 say within wide limits that new knowledge is not worth recording, or that 

 views expressed are best suppressed. The criticism has been raised that 

 the modern tendency to issiie short communications at frequent intervals 

 leads to premature publication, and that much that is published has to 

 be corrected in later papers, and it cannot be denied that recent experience 

 has shown this criticism to be partly true. But it has been the custom 

 of societies to accept short papers with more avidity than long ones, and 

 in consequence authors have come to realise that the short communication 

 stands more chance of acceptance than longer ones. The policy is in a 

 sense wrong, because a series of short papers on the same subject neces- 

 sarily leads to redundancy and frequently to a revision of the views 

 expressed in earlier parts as the work progresses. The trouble seems to 

 lie in the custom which requires an introduction to the series, the aim of 

 which is to give the reader who has no interest in the experimental details 

 a readable account of the scope of the work. If this ' introduction ' were 

 abolished and a ' summary and conclusions ' placed at the end of the 

 paper or series of papers, it would no doubt crab the literary style of the 

 author and detract from the value of the communication as bed-side 

 reading matter, but it would most certainly shorten the paper and would 

 no doubt enhance its value from the scientific standpoint. 



When it is remembered that there are some 23,000 scientific periodicals 

 published throughout the world the mind stands appalled at the prospect 

 that will confront civilisation even in so short a time as 100 years hence, 

 unless some general method of curtailment is agreed on. The space 

 occupied by our ever-increasing libraries must cause alarm to those who 

 contemplate the possibilities of the future. The agreement between the 

 various societies dealing with chemistry to form a joint library at Burling- 

 ton House means at the present time an increase of something like 800 

 volumes yearly — an increase which will augment as time goes on. In 

 the not far distant future the library will occupy the whole of the space 

 available in the society's apartments, and the same problem has to be 

 faced by every other scientific society. Indeed, ciA'ilisation seems to be 

 confronted with two ever-growing problems — the increases in its 

 cemeteries and in its libraries. The former, no doubt, will be solved by 

 cremation. Is it too much to hope that a judicious exercise of this method 

 may also be applied to our libraries 1 



