i5 



works of reference relating to this County. The first volume is 

 an elegantly printed 4to. of over 400 pages, and is, doubtless, so 

 redundant in original research, that " within " it, as they have 

 truly said, " is brought together an immense catalogue of local 

 materials such as could not elsewhere be found, with exact 

 references to the various sources of information." 



If, after these commendations I might venture to hint a 

 desideratum, it would be this ; — The precision with which the 

 titles of all the writings mentioned in the book are copied, or the 

 works in which they are to be found indicated, is so perfect, that 

 to verify them by reference is easy : thus fulfilling a fundamental 

 requirement in any work of a historical nature. To my appre-- 

 hension, it would have been further complying with such 

 requirement were the reader similarly rendered independent of 

 authority as to the completeness of the various lists of writings it 

 comprises. In each instance he should be told whether it was 

 meant to be a full list or a partial one, and whether it were 

 furnished, directly or indirectly, by the author himself, or by some 

 one else. It would have been some guide to the reader's judgment 

 had the editors followed the example of such a book as the 

 Medical Directory, and marked with an asterisk the name of every 

 writer who had declined to fill up the form in the printed circular 

 they had addressed to him, asking (with questions of a personal 

 kind) for a list of his writings. After the same exemplar no 

 university degree, or other literary distinction should be appended 

 to a name without specifying the corporation that had conferred 

 it. It is not every name thus associated in the Bibliotheca that 

 could withstand this test ; and when such distinction is properly 

 appended, not to indicate whence it was derived is to overlook a 

 suggestive fact in the career of the owner. As to the bearing of 

 the first hint, I observe that, with rare exceptions, all the lists of 

 writings are presented without comment, so that an artless reader 

 would take it for granted that all were equally authenticated as 

 complete ; whereas, to the initiated eye, it is perceptible at a glance 

 that many of them have no pretentions to be thus regarded. As 

 an instance that lies patent to all the world I may point to the 

 notice of the writings of a native of this town. Dr. Bastian, 

 professor of pathology in University College, London, &c., whose 

 experiments during the last four or five years on " The Modes of 

 Origin of Lowest Organisms" have been repeated and varied 

 throughout Europe, and have familiarized his name with every 

 physiologist alive. In the enumeration of his literary contributions 

 to periodical literature, the Bibliotheca omits just one half of 

 those that might have been found, ere a line of that work was 

 in type, cited by himself in the Medical Directory ; not, probably, 



