184 THE president's address. 



It is not in the regions of accident and misappropriation that 

 the magnitude and frequency of the incommodities touched upon 

 may be most thoroughly realized. It is rather in listening to the 

 declarations — I had almost said lamentations — of the most candid 

 and diligent labourers in some fields of enquiry as to the multi- 

 plicity, and, too often, insurmountability of the obstacles they 

 encounter, in their endeavours to ascertain what has actually 

 been accomplished by their predecessors on the same ground ; — a 

 perplexity which arises, they tell us, not only from the immense 

 amount of literary material to be sifted, and the vast area in 

 these days of innumerable publications over which it is scattered ; 

 but, often, also from the indiseriminating manner in which had 

 been raked together so much of it as they had found already 

 collected ; or often, where arrangement and digestion had been 

 attempted upon more or less of it, from the inappreciative and 

 inaccurate way in which that process had been effected. 



A natural aspiration in authors of this class is to appear before 

 their readers with unimpeachable consciences, and to set an 

 example worthy of imitation by their successors. In this spirit, 

 for instance, the writers in the Allgemeine Encyklopadie der 

 Physik (started in 1856) use Arabic numerals for marking the 

 footnotes, and add an asterisk whenever a work is thus referred 

 to that the writer had himself read, to distinguish it from the 

 remainder that he had cited on the authority of others, or had not 

 cited from at all even if mentioned. Some, too, have similar 

 devices to intimate two or three other facts, — such as whether 

 the work referred to is an important one as to the subject at 

 issue. Should this scheme be simplified, as it surely might be, 

 and persevered in, the time would not be distant when no writer 

 would dare to make a reference without indicating also whether 

 or no he had himself consulted the work he mentions, and 

 whether he is himself writing in accordance with its views or 

 otherwise, &c. It is true that all sources of such errors as 

 we are considering, would not be destroyed should my antici- 

 pations really come to pass, yet an inestimable advantage to 

 literature would accrue. 



It is very instructive to glance over long lists of such frank 

 references in the works of men who have gained renown for their 

 successful and energetic pursuit of science ; and to observe, in 



