166 
tee endorse all the recommendations made, 
but call attention to the following points, 
partly contained in these criticisms of the 
separate schedules and partly concerned 
with the catalogue as a whole. 
The Royal Society appears to us to have 
made a serious mistake in failing to consider 
bibliographies already in existence. Its 
first duty should have been an examination 
and comparison of these bibliographies. 
Those men of science who have given years 
of thought and labor to the subject should 
have been invited to consider the merging 
of the bibliographies under their control 
into the larger scheme and should have 
been made chiefly responsible for the classi- 
fications of the sciences and for the other 
plans. We are not even told who are re- 
sponsible for the schemes of classification. 
These are of unequal value, closely related 
sciences being in some cases treated very 
differently. The Royal Society has now 
asked the advice of various institutions, but 
the time until the first of January next 
seems to us altogether too short to make the 
necessary arrangements. We recommend 
that the beginning of the twentieth century 
be chosen for the commencement of the 
catalogue. 
The centralization, elaborate machinery 
and governmental support proposed by the 
Royal Society do not always lead to greater 
efficiency than individual initiative. The 
possibility of improving and coordinating 
existing bibliographies instead of crushing 
them has apparently not been considered. 
We recommend that the Royal Society 
draw up and publish at as early a date as 
possible full details of existing bibliographies 
of the sciences. 
We regard the card catalogue as more im- 
portant than the book catalogue, and more 
in need of a central bureau for distribution. 
The Royal Society’s Committee have, how- 
ever, not considered the card catalogues 
already in existence or the possibility of 
SCIENCE. 
(N.S. Von. X. No. 241. 
securing entries for card catalogues from the 
compilers of existing bibliographies. They 
recommend a card 5x8 in., forgetting that 
even in Great Britain the metric system is 
used for scientific work, and apparently not 
knowing that standard cards in the metric 
system are in use throughout the world. 
We have in this University hundreds of 
thousands of such cards in use. It would 
be desirable to supply cards in both of the 
standard sizes—5 x 12.5 cm. and 7.5x 12.5 
em. In the specimen cards given by the 
Committee of the Royal Society no effort is 
made to print the entries at the top of the 
card, which seems to indicate that the Com- 
mittee are not familiar with the method of 
filing the cards. The cards should be punc- 
tured for a bar to keep them in place. Uni- 
form methods of citation are not followed in 
the different sciences. The method used in 
botany appears to us the best for all the 
sciences, except that the year of publication 
should probably be transferred to the end. . 
We recommend that the Royal Society re- 
port on methods of citation employed in 
existing bibliographies and make recom- 
mendations for the adoption of a uniform 
system. , 
In regard to classifications, it is evident 
that bibliographical convenience rather 
than the logic of the sciences is the matter 
to be considered. From either point of view 
there appears to be as much reason to make 
mechanics, anatomy and pathology sepa- 
rate sciences as meteorology and crystal- 
lography. The exclusion of applied science 
may be necessary, but it is unfortunate, and 
will probably lead to the continuation or 
establishment of bibliographies in chemis- 
try, electricity, geology, pathology, etc., 
more useful to students than a catalogue 
confined to pure science. The sub-classifi- 
cations in new decimal systems for each 
science may be desirable, but it is not 
certain that a minute classification by sym- 
bols is better than an alphabetical classifi- 
