July 13, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



59 



,oilium Bibliographicum, which has since 

 begun operations in Ziirich and I under- 

 stand is prepared to include botany among 

 the subjects that it handles. It is a matter 

 for regret that the Eoyal Society's proposal 

 for an international catalogue of current 

 literature has failed to materialize for the 

 time being, but it is possible that if a satis- 

 factory purely botanical bibliographic jour- 

 nal cannot be secured, this scheme can still 

 be put into practical motion. In one way 

 or another, in any event, it is certain that 

 some provision of the kind must be secured 

 within a very few years. 



However specialized, publications con- 

 sidered as a whole are in need of far more 

 careful editing than they commonly receive. 

 The author who prepares manuscript for 

 publication is more likely than not to cast 

 it in final form with reference only to what 

 he says in it or what he himself may have 

 already published or may expect to publish 

 at some future time, and the result of this 

 disjointed treatment is perhaps most readily 

 seen when some subsequent compiler, let us 

 say of a popular flora, copies side by side 

 the descriptions of a number of writers. 

 The most diverse phraseology is at once 

 evidenced, although the compiler, on the 

 basis of his own information, may have at- 

 tempted to simplify the matter somewhat. 

 Comparable things are treated in different 

 paragraphic location ; similar facts are 

 stated in dissimilar phraseology ; and a 

 character strongly emphasized under one 

 species is not at all considered in another. 

 In one paragraph a certain page of a certain 

 book or journal is cited in one form, and in 

 an adjoining paragraph in another form 

 and perhaps under another author, and pos- 

 sibly even with a different page reference 

 in case, as is often true, author's separates 

 of the article quoted have been issued with 

 individual pagination and even plate num- 

 bering. 



At the Botanical Congress held in Madi- 



son in 1893, this and several other matters 

 calling for uniformity of treatment in the 

 interest of clearness were referred to com- 

 mittees, some of which reported at the next 

 succeeding meeting of this Section or of the 

 Botanical Club of the Association. The 

 increase in intelligibility and simplicity of 

 bibliographic citations noticeable of late 

 years is an encouraging sign that botanists 

 are quite willing to attempt to work out on 

 uniform lines these matters which are of 

 interest to all who have occasion to consult 

 botanical literature, so soon as the method 

 of procedure in each case shall have been 

 carefully codified with reference to the 

 practical difiicul ties which each writer has to 

 confront. 



Among the editorial matters to which 

 really this question of citation pertains, 

 although it practically falls back upon 

 the author, should be mentioned a com- 

 parable treatment of comparable facts ex- 

 pressed by diagrams, curves, formulae, and 

 the like. The tendency of large volume 

 in any publication is to economy of space 

 by the employment of symbols or ab- 

 breviations, which must be learned and 

 borne in mind by every reader before the 

 facts which they stand for are intelligible. 

 If these symbols could be standardized for 

 all writers who use this means of expressing 

 their facts, it would result in added value 

 for their work and in a great saving of the 

 users' time. "What can be done for symbols, 

 however, cannot always be done for what 

 are treated as abbreviations, because of the 

 fact that the word abbreviated is different 

 in one language from what it is in another ; 

 and yet there is no doubt that much improve- 

 ment can be effected in this direction, while 

 a perfectly uniform result for the entire 

 world may be ultimately attainable by fall- 

 ing back upon the Latin language for words 

 which are to be abbreviated. 



Detail matters of this kind are often con- 

 sidered too trivial to occupy the attention 



