Periodical Works on Natural History. 301 



genera and species.* To use a common proverb', it would be 

 like " searching for a needle in a pottle of hay," to look for a 

 plant among the fifty-six volumes of the Botanical Magazine^ 

 were it not for the assistance of the general index, without 

 which the work would be little better than a confused medley 

 of sweets, rudis indigestaque moles, possessing, indeed, an 

 abundance of rich and valuable stores, of which, however, we 

 could only, with labour and difficulty, avail ourselves in time 

 of need* 



Turn we now to the positive M;z?W2>e<i disadvantages of the 

 periodical system. Of these, some are such as maij, and 

 therefore ought, to be avoided ; others are inevitable, and 

 therefore must be patiently endured. To the latter class may 

 be referred the risk which the purchaser always incurs of 

 having a work, on which he has expended a large sum, left 

 incomplete on his hands. Many are the instances in point 

 which might be mentioned : instances of works birth-strangled 

 as it were, dying suddenly a premature death, or, at least, 

 stopping short without being finished, and thus reminding one 

 of the Hudibrastic distich, 



" The adventure of the bear and fiddle 

 Is sung, but breaks off in the middle." 



Perhaps the author himself dies : his work, of course, is discon- 

 tinued ; or, at all events, it falls into other, probably less able, 

 hands. The newly appointed editor, the "wet nurse, as he may 

 be called, of the publication, is perhaps precluded, by the very 

 nature of the case, from the possibility of giving to the work 

 that character and stamp of excellence which the genuine parent 

 had done, and would have continued to do, almost without an 

 effort. Who can doubt that Dr. Sibthorp's Flora Gnrceca 

 would have more completely realised the author's plan, had 

 he lived to publish it himself? And yet, it is but justice to 

 say, that, after his death, the materials were intrusted for pub- 

 lication to the care of Sir J. E. Smith, the plates to be exe- 

 cuted by Mr. Sowerby ; of all others, perhaps, the two most 

 fitting persons that could have been selected for the purpose. 



* Many periodical works on botany, &c., when once brought to a conclu- 

 siony may be bound up, not in the order of publication, but systematically, 

 according to some scientific arrangement. Having myself had Sowerby's 

 English Botany bound up after the Linnean system, I find the work, in this 

 state, far more convenient to refer to ; and, consequently, refer to it now 

 ten times, perhaps, for once that I should have done had the subjects re- 

 mained in the order of publication, and the different species of a genus been 

 laboriously to be sought for as they lay scattered up and down through 

 thirty-six volumes. Such persons as may happen to have a copy in num- 

 bers, or in boards, I would strongly recommend to adopt this or some similar 

 plan. 



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