NOVEMBER 17, 1899.] 
rare earths, for one of which, should it 
prove to be an element, he proposed the 
name of Rogerum, in honor of our William 
B. Rogers. 
Our Association has always been fortu- 
nate in its permanent secretaries. They 
have all been devoted to the interests of 
the organization and two of them held 
office for many years. 
secretary was Spencer F. Baird, who was 
chosen to that office at the Cincinnati meet- 
ing in 1851, and continued as such until 
1854, when he was succeeded by Joseph 
Lovering, who then filled the place until 
1873, when hein turn was succeeded by the 
present retiring president, Professor Put- 
nam. lLovering’s valuable services were 
recognized by his election to the presidency 
in 1872, and he presided over the meeting 
held in Portland a year later. 
Marcus BENJAMIN. 
U.S. NatronaL MusEuM. 
( To be concluded. ) 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF BOTANICAL 
PUBLICATIONS.* 
A RECENT number of Screncr,+ in con- 
tinuation of the discussion of the proposed 
international catalogue of scientific litera- 
ture, to which space has been devoted in 
that journal for some months past, deals 
with the question of botany, and the article 
referred to must be considered as my excuse 
for the presentation to the Society of the 
following observations, which are intended 
solely as suggestions which, in part, may be 
helpful in starting the botanical portion of 
the proposed catalogue on lines which are 
likely to make it of the simplicity, coher- 
ence and general usefulness which all desire 
it to possess. 
* Read before the Columbus meeting of the Botan- 
ical Society of America, and by request of the Society 
before Section G of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science at the Columbus meeting. 
TN.S. 10: 46-8. Jl. 13, 1899. 
The first permanent ~ 
SCIENCE. 713 
In the article referred to, Professor Bessey 
has called attention to a paper prepared by 
the writer, some years since, for the Botan- 
ical Seminar of the University of Nebraska, 
which was intended to present before that 
body the results reached in the handling of 
a rather large library, the purpose of which 
is entirely botanical, applied botany and 
the arts based thereon of necessity being in- 
cluded. The subject now under consid- 
eration, while fundamentally the same as 
that handled in the unpublished paper re- 
ferred to, is, however, practically quite dif- 
ferent in the details of its management. In 
the paper referred to, the problem analyzed 
was that of the arrangement of a library 
which, devoted to botany, stood in isolation 
from other libraries, so that many works 
were of necessity included in it because of 
their bearing on botanical subjects, although 
in title and in some instances in substance 
not at all botanical. The subject requiring 
consideration in connection with the pro- 
posed catalogue, however, is that of a 
purely botanical library which may be sup- 
posed to stand in the closest possible con- 
nection with collections of works referring 
to all other branches of knowledge—or, 
stated otherwise, the botanical part of a 
general library—and is, therefore, in many 
respects a simplerone. The first mentioned 
can scarcely be so handled as to meet with 
the approval of general librarians or of 
librarians whose subjects are restricted but 
not botanical, because general knowledge 
and other sciences are of necessity warped 
therein that they may be bent to the re- 
quirements of the single specialty to which 
each book which finds a place on the shelves 
is subordinated. The second, on the other 
hand, calls primarily for a simple but log- 
ical classification of botanical knowledge, 
with provision for the insertion in it of a 
relatively small number of non-botanical 
works which are in such frequent demand 
as to call for the provision of a special copy 
