AucustT 4, 1899.] 
Thus a person interested in Cytology 
would be obliged to seek through all the 
groups of animals from Protozoa to Mam- 
mals in order to find the cards that he 
would require. It would have been ex- 
tremely easy, with 4 littleexperience, to have 
arranged the same divisions so that the im- 
mense advantage which the Decimal System 
presents in this regard could have been ob- 
tained for thenewschedules; but, here again, 
the Committee failed to grasp the problem, 
and consequently made no attempt to solve 
it. Nearly one-fourth of our subscribers 
require an arrangement which the Royal 
Society’s schedules cannot give them. This 
is only one, however, of the special adapta- 
tions possible with the Decimal System. At 
present we have 7 such arrangements, each 
of which corresponds to certain definite 
needs. Itis a significant fact that our ar- 
rangement, corresponding most closely to 
that absolutely prescribed by the Royal 
Society’s schedules, has been offered for sale 
for two years and has found no subscribers. 
Of course, a prime necessity in such a 
system of classification is that there should 
be a place for everything. It is also one of 
‘the most difficult features to attain. In 
elaborating the system employed in the 
Concilium Bibliographicum months were 
entirely devoted to studying the topics 
dealt with in the publications of a period 
of ten years, so as to properly proportion 
the divisions to the rate of publication and, 
above all, to be sure that no important topic 
was omitted. The after-trial showed that 
this had been done so successfully that there 
was little to add, the only serious omission 
being ‘phosphorescence,’ and this omission 
was due to an error in copying. A certain 
number of unusual topics do, indeed, appear 
each year which it is difficult to classify, as, 
for example, Ebner’s papers on the electrical 
qualities of hair and feathers. On the 
other hand, scarcely a week passes when we 
‘do not meet with a dozen papers that the 
SCIENCE. 
139 
new schedules could not cope with, save, per- 
haps, by frequent repetition. What, for ex- 
ample, could be done with a lecture on Scien- 
tific Methods? Where would one classify 
a paper on the Advance of Natural Science 
during the Victorian Era? ‘There is no 
place for Sir. Wm. Flower’s book on 
museums, or rather there are many places 
for it. Then the science of microscopy 
with special text-books, with special jour- 
nals, has no place assigned to it either as a 
primary science or as an aid to such 
sciences as Zoology or Botany. 
In the choice of divisions the Committee 
has been not less unfortunate. For instance, 
there is a general division Arthropoda, but 
none for insects. A preliminary statistical 
study would have revealed to the framers 
of the tables that for every 20 papers ap- 
propriately placed under Arthropoda there 
are about 375 which deal exclusively with 
insects in general. One further instance 
may suffice. The Concilium Bibliograph- 
icum has experienced great difficulty with 
one of its divisions, namely, 07. This di- 
vision, which is used for Museums, Labora- 
tories, Stations, Technical Methods and 
Methods of Study, proves in practice utterly 
unwieldy. The diversity of these topics 
makes the search for a trifling matter a 
work of great labor. We had just begun 
to realize this when criticisms began coming 
in from our subscribers stating that they, 
too, found this group unwieldy. It was 
with interest, then, that I turned to the new 
schedules. to see how the matter had there 
been treated. Far, however, from breaking 
up this division, the new schedules add to 
the diversified topics already mentioned the 
following special text-books and manuals: 
Relations to Plants; Injurious Animals ; 
Special Products, Wax, Silk, Honey ; Bib- 
liographical, including Historical, Biograph- 
ical. Could anything be less practical than 
this? It is, of course, no answer to state 
that it is proposed to use the system of 
