October 16, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



563 



against 20. The additional space devoted to 

 such subjects is usually distributed well. One 

 or two subjects might still be extended. For 

 example, iron (including all steels) is covered 

 in twenty pages, one fifth that devoted to naph- 

 thalene. No mention of electric furnace steel 

 products is made. Such subjects as metallog- 

 raphy (21 pp.), toxins and antitoxins (4), col- 

 loids (4), utilization of atmospheric nitrogen 

 (12), radioactivity (11), and many others ap- 

 pear for the first time. These representatives 

 will also serve to indicate that the dictionary 

 is not so closely confined to applied chemistry 

 as the earlier editions. In many of the topics 

 the completeness is quite remarkable and fre- 

 quently includes references to patents con- 

 taining matter not found in other published 

 researches, and therefore not generally avail- 

 able. 



W. E. Whitney 



Catalogue of Scientific Papers. Fourth Series 

 (1884r-1900). Compiled by the Eoyal Soci- 

 ety of London. Vol. XIII., A-B. Cam- 

 bridge, University Press. 1914. 

 The first incentive to the monumental under- 

 taking of which the present volume marks the 

 beginning of the end in its original form, 

 came from America, in a communication from 

 Professor Joseph Henry to the British Asso- 

 ciation at Glasgow in 1855, suggesting the 

 formation of a catalogue of philosophical 

 memoirs, which was favorably reported upon 

 by a committee of the Association in the fol- 

 lowing year. Six volumes, in quarto, covering 

 the scientific periodical literature from 1800 

 to 1863, were issued under the superintendence 

 of the Eoyal Society from 1867-Y2, and were 

 followed by two volumes, covering 1864-73, in 

 1877-9, three volumes, covering 1874-83, in 

 1891-6, and a supplementary volume, cover- 

 ing literature of 1800-83 not hitherto indexed, 

 in 1902. The present volume is the beginning 

 of a series which will cover all papers pub- 

 lished or read during 1884r-1900, completing 

 the catalogue for the whole of the nineteenth 

 century. The four series, when completed, 

 will thus comprise a complete author cata- 

 logue of the scientific literature of 1800-1900, 



no subject rubrics being employed. All scien- 

 tific literature published after the end of 1900 

 has been in the hands of the authorities of the 

 International Catalogue of Scientific Litera- 

 ture, and since 1907 has been issued in the 

 form of subject bibliographies of the funda- 

 mental sciences by the International Council 

 of the Eoyal Society. 



Before the Eoyal Society undertook this 

 work, there had been, from the time of Conrad 

 Gesner's " Bibliotheca Universalis " (1545- 

 49), other bibliographies of similar scope, such 

 as the " Eepertorium commentationum " of 

 J. D. Eeuss (1800-21), which was confined to 

 society transactions and not limited to scien- 

 tific papers, or the " Gelehrten-Lexicon " of 

 C. G. Jocher (1750-51), continued by Adelung 

 and Eotermund (1784-1819), with a final 

 volume by Eotermund (1897). In the year of 

 the Eoyal Society's first venture in this field 

 (1865), the physicist, J. C. Poggendorff (of 

 PoggendorfE's Annalen) published his " Biog- 

 raphisch-literarisches Handworterbuch," con- 

 taining biographical bibliographies of 8,400 

 scientists, which was continued for the years 

 1858-83 by Feddersen and von Oettingen in 

 1898, and to 1904 by the latter. Of exhaustive 

 bibliographies of special subjects, many of 

 which are listed in Petzholdt's " Bibliotheca 

 Bibliographica " (1866), there have been such 

 striking examples as those of Haller in botany 

 (1771-2), anatomy (1774-7), surgery (l774r-7) 

 and internal medicine (1776-8) ; A. G. Kast- 

 ner in mathematics (1796-1800) ; C. P. Calli- 

 sen's 33-volume catalogue on the medical 

 literature of his time (1830-45) ; L. Agassiz in 

 zoology and geology (1848-54), and such later 

 works as those of Waring in therapeutics 

 (1878), E. Schmid in public hygiene (1898- 

 1906), Laehr in neurology (1900), Stiles and 

 Hassall in parasitology (1900—2), and Abder- 

 halden in alcoholism (1904) . The entire liter- 

 ature of medicine has been covered, both for 

 authors and subjects, in the well-known 

 "Index Catalogue" of J. S. Billings (1880- 

 1914), now nearing its completion. The 

 author catalogue of the Eoyal Society forms 

 at once a supplement and a complement to 

 aU these, containing many titles not to be 



