26o A Librarian's Work. [xh. 



nevertheless been chosen with reference to the easier 

 portions of a librarian'.s work, for a description of the 

 more intricate problems of cataloguing could hardly 

 fail to be both tedious and unintelligible to the un- 

 initiated reader. Enough has been said to show that 

 a cataloguer's work requires at the outset consider- 

 able judgment and discrimination, and a great deal 

 of slow plodding research. The facts which we take 

 such pains to ascertain may seem petty when con- 

 trasted with the dazzling facts which are elicited by 

 scientific researches. But in reality the grandest 

 scientific truths are reached only after the minute 

 scrutiny of facts which often seem very trivial. And 

 though the little details which encumber a librarian's 

 mind do not minister to grand or striking generalisa- 

 tions, though their destiny is in the main an obscure 

 one, yet if they were not duly taken care of, the use- 

 fulness of libraries as aids to high culture and pro- 

 found investigation would be fatally impaired. To the 

 student's unaided faculties a great library is simply a 

 trackless wilderness ; the catalogue of such a library 

 is itself a kind of wilderness, albeit much more readily 

 penetrated and explored ; but unless a book be entered 

 with extreme accuracy and fulness on the catalogue, 

 it is practically lost to the investigator who needs it, 

 and might almost as well not be in the library at all. 



I 



