April 19, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



433 



tei-s, microscopes, and a museum of old and uew con- 

 trivances are now in tlic scrap heap. Until to-day, I 

 felt I had tlie observatory I intended to put up in 

 England completely furnished, and I was proud of the 

 furniture. 



One verj' cruel cut was the picking up of an insur- 

 ance policy dated 1878, which fluttered out of the 

 ruins. One reason that I liave not insured for some 

 years past is because day and night I always had for 

 purposes of continuous photography open benzine 

 lamps burning in my house, and I should have had 

 to tell the agent about the little tricks they played 

 when first I used them. It may sound odd, but I do 

 not think a stranger to their ways can light one so 

 that nothing shall happen during the next three days. 

 Against eccentricities like these 1 insured myself by 

 having above them a bunch of fluffy paper, wliich, if 

 the lamp blazed up, was burned and burned its sus- 

 pended sti'ing. Tliis was followed by the falling of a 

 lever, when an electric bell in my bedroom and one in 

 the kitchen was set going. 



Outside the door of the instrument room stood tire- 

 extinguishei-s and a heap of rugs. Prom time to 

 time I had ' fire drill, ' going through the operation 

 of turning up a lamp, burning the paper, ringing the 

 bells, alarming everybody, and then putting out the 

 conflagration — in fact, very much like what happens 

 on ship-board, only I had real fire — which was easily 

 extingui.shed. 



But what happened was the unexpected; the fire 

 broke out in the midst of a pile of wood in an out- 

 house, and this, with a nice wind blowing, on a Sun- 

 day morning, when tlicre was no one near to help. 



And now I have next to nothing — decorations, 

 medals, diplomas, clothes, manuscripts, extending 

 over twenty-five years, and everything else has gone 

 up in smoke ; still it is not altogether a misfortune. 



I shall not have a sale, nor the worrj- of selecting 

 amongst my accumulations; there will be no l)uying 

 boxes and packing up, neither will there be any hag- 

 gling with custom house officials, or trouble in col- 

 lecting on an insurance policy. On the other hand, 

 I sliall have new clothes, and some time or other, I 

 hope, new clocks and new instrumeuts, whilst what 

 I have got is the knowledge that 1 have many sincere 

 and kind friends. Tlieir clothes don't fit, but the 

 sympathy that they have expressed and the little 

 things they have sent me tells me that I should never 

 be homeless in Jai>an. Looked at in the right way; 

 like an earthquake, a fire may, after all, be a blessing 

 in disguise, l)ut, of course, it is sometimes pretty well 

 wrapped up. 



Dies inv, dies ilia, 



Solvet sa;clum in favilla." 



Pi'ofessor Milne asks me to make public 

 the loss of his address book and his desire 

 to send to all to whom it may be due, cop- 

 ies of Vol. IV. ofthe 'Seismologioal Journal.' 

 This, he says, is an unusually large number, 

 and he hopes an unusually valuable contri- 

 bution to Seismology — his • expiring eflbrt : ' 

 and he asks all to whom this volume should 

 be sent to address him, care Japan Mail 

 Office, Yokohama. 



Out of the few hundred copies, more or 

 less, ofthe Transactions of the Seismolog- 

 ical Society of Japan, he will be able to 

 make up some sets ; and those desiring to 

 obtain them should address him, care Geo- 

 logical Society, Burlington House, London. 

 And finally, he earnestly desires to receive, 

 in exchange or otherwise, copies of any 

 papers on or relating to earthquakes, vol- 

 canoes, or earth movements in general. 



I am sure that every one who can will 

 respond to this last appeal and cheerfully 

 do whatever is possible to assist Professor 

 Milne to replace, as far as may be, the ac- 

 cumulations of a quarter of a century, con- 

 verted into sunset-reddening dust in a few 

 short moments. T. C. M. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 

 THE IDEAL INDEX TO SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



To THE Editor of Science : Since you 

 have been so kind as to ask me to con- 

 tribute to Science my views as to how the 

 plan of cataloguing scientific literature may 

 best be accomplished, I venture to present 

 the following considerations. It is probable 

 that some of the ideas suggested are im- 

 practicable, and indeed that the plan is too 

 extensive and unwieldly to be undertaken 

 as a whole at the ijreseut time. The litera- 

 ture of science is so vast and the number of 

 workers so gi-eat, the degree of specializa- 

 tion in modern work so intense and the 

 participation in research so wide-spread 

 over the world, that a really adequate and 



