XII.] A Librarian's Work. 247 



generally tumbles down when unsupported. This 

 physical fact makes it necessary to keep pamphlets 

 in files by themselves until it is thought worth while 

 to bind them. But for the purposes of cataloguing 

 it makes no difference whether a book consists of 

 twenty pages between paper covers or of five hundred 

 pages bound in full calf If you wish to find M. Leon 

 de Rosny's Aperqu general des Langiies semitiqties, 

 you do not care, and very likely do not know, 

 whether it is a " pamphlet " of fifty pages or a 

 "volume" of three hundred, and you naturally 

 grumble at a system which sends you to a second 

 alphabet in order to maintain a purely arbitrary 

 and useless distinction. In practice this double 

 catalogue was found to be so inconvenient that in 

 1850, after the pamphlet titles had come to fill eight 

 cumbrous volumes, it was abandoned, and hence- 

 forth pamphlets, as well as maps and engravings, were 

 placed on the same alphabet with bound volumes. 



Before long, however, it began to be felt necessary 

 to reform this whole cumbrous system. To ascertain 

 whether a given work was contained in the library, 

 one had now to consult four different alphabets, — 

 the old printed catalogue, the first or printed supple- 

 ment, the second or card supplement, and the eight ugly 

 folios of pamphlet titles. These later supplements, 



