134 
in practice; nor can the matter be easily 
explained. A simple statement may, how- 
ever, serve as an illustration. Thus far the 
Concilium Bibliographicum has issued more 
than 3,000,000 cards. During the past year 
we made a trifling modification in the 
typography, which surely passed unnoticed 
by nearly all our subscribers. This dis- 
covery leads to a minute saving on each 
card, but in view of the enormous number 
of cards the saving is great enough to modify 
considerably the balance sheet. 
T have given the schedules proposed by the 
Royal Society’s Committee a fair trial, with 
more than 3,000 different zoological cards. 
Indeed, I have worked so much with this 
classification that I once knew it quite by 
heart. It is my firm conviction that our 
organization would have long since failed 
utterly had we been obliged to use it for 
our work. It is also significant that the 
faults of the new schedules are merely ex- 
aggerations of those that I should have made 
when I first began working out the details 
of our own undertaking. I have recently 
passed in review some of my own notes, 
dating from February, 1894, and I am sur- 
prised to see there the same insufficiencies in 
what I then considered a completely ade- 
quate plan. 
It is difficult to criticise, in the definite 
way that one would desire, a work which 
probably scarcely a dozen of the readers of 
ScrENcE can ever have seen. For this rea- 
son I shall refer rather to a Memorandum 
published by the Committee subsequent to 
Professor Carus’s article, and which is in- 
tended to justify the course followed. In 
one respect this Memorandum resembles its 
predecessors in a way that is most regret- 
table. It is that of ignoring all that others 
have done or said in regard to the matter 
under consideration. Professor Carus had 
brought direct, definite and undeniable 
charges of insufficiency against the schedules 
of the Committee. Not one of these charges 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. X. No. 240. 
has been answered nor even alluded to. 
Surely this refusal to accept debate and the 
avoidance of publicity cannot be indefinitely 
maintained. The scientific world has the 
right to know why no account is to be taken 
of the opinions of those best qualified to 
judge of the merits of the case. 
The methods of those who use the decimal 
system are condemned in this Memorandum 
with a few words, which I shall transcribe : 
‘The Committee prefers to designate the 
sciences by letters rather than by numbers.’’ 
In my opinion, this is a small matter ; it 
is a mere matter of convention, like signals 
at sea. Uniformity alone isessential. The 
Concilium Bibliographicum will soon have 
5,000,000 cards where a number is used for 
this purpose ; this number is the same that 
is used for the same division in all libraries 
using the decimal system; it also corresponds 
with the numbers used for 2,500,000 
different cards in Brussels, and with a 
larger collection in Paris. Such use has 
been advocated by the French Association 
for the Advancement of Science, by the 
Société de Biologie, by the Société Zoolo- 
gique, by the corresponding Swiss organiza- 
tions and by numerous Italian and Belgian 
societies. Indeed, the Decimal Classifica- 
tion has had a marvellous development. 
Unknown in Europe a few years ago, it has 
spread over the whole of Europe; it has 
been carried to Australia and to South 
America ; indeed, I recently heard of an ap- 
plication that was being made of itin Japan 
and another in Hawaii. It has not, of course, 
yet gained the confidence of the majority 
of bibliographers. That would be too much 
to expect of it, but we may be assured that 
a short experience with cards would con- 
vince even those now opposed. In the 
future, if the will of the Committee prevails, 
two systems will struggle for mastery. The 
new symbols can only be introduced by 
destroying the accord that has already been 
attained. In a word, in’ ‘preferring’ to 
