826 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 233. 



It is the business of bibliography to cata- 

 logue all works appearing separately — viz : 

 books, periodicals, publications of societies, 

 monographs, atlases and pamphlets, whether 

 published by dealei'S, by institutions or 

 privately — with exact statement of the name 

 of the author or authors, if known, the 

 form, the extent (including the number of 

 pages, and, if present, of plates, tables or 

 other additions), the place and time of pub- 

 lication, and where and at what price pro- 

 curable. This part of the literature, so im- 

 portant for the special workers in diiferent 

 fields, has been collected in separate works 

 of a general nature (like that long since 

 published by Eeuss) or in repoi-ts on the 

 literature of the separate branches. The 

 custom of several societies of giving their 

 separate papers to the dealers as soon as 

 they were printed and of uniting these into 

 a volume only at a later date, as well as the 

 practice of antiquarian book dealers since 

 the middle of the present century, of cutting 

 up the volumes of periodicals and society 

 publications (because treatises on separate 

 subjects are more salable than volumes 

 treating of a great variety of matters), re- 

 sulted in the incorporation of the titles of 

 such works in bibliographies, often, indeed, 

 without any statement as to their source. 

 In order to protect the special investi- 

 gator from the mistake of supposing that 

 these were independent works that had es- 

 caped his notice, it became necessary to in- 

 corporate in bibliographies the contents of 

 periodicals with a statement of the volume 

 and the time of publication. It was in ac- 

 cordance with these principles that I elabo- 

 rated the Bibliotheca Zoologica. 



It is in this way that bibliography, in a 

 somewhat enlarged sense, it must be ad- 

 mitted, can and shouldbe compiled. But the 

 needs of scientific investigators were notfully 

 met by this. In addition to these bibliog- 

 raphies arose the Jahresberichte on the sepa- 

 rate sciences. It is the province of the latter 



to note not only the contents of the publica- 

 tions under consideration, but also the scien- 

 tific results contained in them. Bibliog- 

 raphy may, indeed, meet the needs of the 

 writers of Jahresberichte, first — by giving 

 the contents of the separate works, yet this 

 ought to be restricted to those cases where 

 the contents refer to two or more not imme- 

 diately connected subjects (e. g., if, in a 

 work on precession and nutation, the special 

 form of a new meridian circle is described, 

 or if a treatise on one class of animals con- 

 tains communications on an entirely differ- 

 ent class); and, secondly, by exceeding the 

 minimum limit for the citation of scientific 

 contributions and incorporating, for ex- 

 ample, from periodicals, notices of only 3 or 

 4 lines, if these contain important or inter- 

 esting new facts (e. g., the discovery of a 

 definite organ in a group of animals in 

 which it has not hitherto been found, or the 

 presence of a species of animal in a place 

 where it has not been previously observed) . 

 This, however, is the utmost limit to which 

 bibliography (sensu latissimo') should go. 



The first objection to be raised to the plan 

 of the Eoyal Society Catalogue lies in the 

 impracticable though only partial amalga- 

 mation of bibliographic work with that of 

 the absti-acts and reviews. No. 17 (Eesolu- 

 tion No. G) of the Conference reads : "That, 

 in indexing according to subject-matter, re- 

 gard shall be had, not only to the title (of 

 a paper or book), but also to the nature of 

 the contents." According to the wording 

 this practically corresponds to my last state- 

 ment. But the undertaking planned by the 

 Eoyal Society deviates from this in essen- 

 tial particulars, and, indeed, in a manner 

 that is absolutely impracticable and, at 

 least as far as regards the examples given 

 in the Eeport, useless. The plan is im- 

 practicable because the matter to be in- 

 dexed is subdivided far too minutely. If, 

 for example, all the new species of animals 

 were to be enumerated under the name o 



