Dbcembbr 21), 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



1025 



ing been apparently overlooked. Had the 

 Concilium followed the usual methods of 

 bibliography, there would have been only 

 the advantage of greater completeness and 

 the ease of reference resulting from the 

 use of the card system. The long search 

 would have been replaced by a single 

 glance; that is all. But it is evident that 

 a bibliography of the fauna of Rhode 

 Island must contain references to such 

 works as Carpenter 's studies on the ' Shell- 

 bearing Mollusca of Rhode Island. ' Hith- 

 erto=-such references had, however, always 

 been simply classed under Mollusca. In 

 1897, however, the Concilium attempted 

 the innovation of entering such papers 

 also under the appropriate faunistic head- 

 ing, and so laid the basis for its so-called 

 'complete series,' which to-day forms the 

 principal raison d'etre of the bibliography. 



Towards the end of 1897 a further step 

 was taken in classifying according to the 

 text and not according to the title. Thus 

 Ehrmann 's ' Notes on Eastern North Amer- 

 ican Cychrus' was classified under Rhode 

 Island, because the text showed that his 

 collections came from that state. 



Then in 1899 a very important step 

 was taken, which had at first seemed quite 

 impossible. This was the introduction of 

 multiple exhaustive entries. Till then 

 papers of so general a character that they 

 embraced species from all the various con- 

 tinents were omitted from the special 

 faunistic bibliography. From 1899 on, 

 however, it has been attempted to take 

 account of every feature of the publication 

 to be recorded. Thus a paper on tropical 

 Coleoptera, if it contained references to 

 African, South American and Malayan 

 forms would be classified under Coleop- 

 tera, under Africa, under South America 

 and under Malayan Archipelago. If, in 

 addition, there were a section devoted to 

 mimicry and another to myrmecophily, 

 two further editions of the card reference 



would be issued classed under these head- 

 ings. Thus, for example, in Kerremans' 

 third study on Buprestidaa, 96 new species 

 were described, of which one solitary spe- 

 cies of Brachys came from Florida. Sub- 

 scribers will find the entry in the appro- 

 priate place under fauna of Florida. 



This new procedure brought the bibliog- 

 raphy to a state of perfection that certainly 

 never was attempted before ; but there 

 still remained one difficulty, which, in spite 

 of many experiments, we were unable to 

 overcome until the present year. 



The subscriber who desires to receive all 

 references to the fauna of Rhode Island 

 can not depend upon finding all he requires 

 in our division Fauna of Rhode Island, 

 even though our treatment of the section 

 has been so exhaustive. There are papers 

 on the Fauna of New England in general 

 that contain notes on Rhode Island.* 

 There may be important observations on 

 Rhode Island in papers that we have been 

 forced to classify under fauna of the 

 United States or even of North America 

 in general. 



In order to obviate this difficulty our 

 bibliographers now, in reading a paper, 

 jot down each item as they come to it ; thus, 

 if they find species from Ontario, from all 

 of the New England States, from New 

 Mexico and from California, they will have 

 recorded every single state; if the paper 

 have notes on the structure of the eyes, 

 the heart, and the kidneys, this will have 

 been recorded; finally, if the paper be 

 on Mollusca of the families Unionidee, 

 Helicidffi and Cyclostomidje, evidence of 

 this will be found in the notes taken. 

 Three editions only of the card will be 

 issued under anatomy, North American 

 fauna and Mollusca; but the edition ap- 

 pearing in the division anatomy will have 



* Thus King's ' Further Notes on New England 

 Formicidae ' deals with Vermont, Massachusetts 

 and Rhode Island forms. 



