176 REMARKS ON BOTANICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



Dal as Dal Sie. 

 Del „ Del Bio. 

 Delia ,, Delia Casa. 

 Des ,, Des Cloisseaux. 

 wt under the prefixes 



Du as Du Bois. 



La ,, La Condamine. 

 Le , , Le Sage. 



D" as Abbadie not D'Abbadie. 



Da „ Silva „ Da Silva. 



De „ La Place ,, De La Place. 



Von „ Humboldt „ Von Humboldt. 



Van „ Beneden ,, Van Beneden. 



" It is an acknowledged principle that when the prefix is a 

 preposition it is to be rejected, but when an article it is to be 

 retained. When, however, as in the case of the French Du, Des, 

 the two are joined, it is necessary to retain the preposition. This 

 also applies to the case of the Italian Delia, which is often rejected 

 by cataloguers." 



Last, but scarcely least, the vile practice of intermingling 

 I with J, and U with V, must be eschewed as a relic of barbarism ; 

 the nuisance of having to discover a name like Ives, and finding 

 it sandwiched between Juery and Jueterbock, must be felt to be 

 duly appreciated. 



Assuredly no light task will devolve upon the future botanical 

 bibliographer. In addition to the comparison of Pritzel's 

 ' Ihesaurus' with the actual volumes, title by title, the wonderfully 

 rapid growth of botanical literature will inevitably render the 

 undertaking one of much time and great labour. In exemplification 

 ol the astounding increase in scientific writing, we may take the 

 Koyal Society's ' Catalogue of Scientific Papers * ; vols. i. to vi. 

 contain 5743 pages, or an average of 91 pages for each of the 63 

 years included therein ; vols. vii. and viii. have 2357 pages between 



aIohoT m a fraction of 2 36 pages for each year between 1864 

 and 1873! To accomplish the task, the chief cities of Europe, at 

 least, must be visited, and every available library, whether public 

 or private, thoroughly searched. My own recent experience has 

 taught me the very great difficulty experienced in working up the 

 iterature of one s own country, and the difficulty is certainly not 

 lessened when foreign literature is also undertaken. For example, 

 the library of the herbarium at Kew is extremely rich : as a working 

 library, I do not think it is likely to be equalled by any other 

 extant certainly not surpassed. But elementary works, which 

 constitute no small proportion of botanical publications, are hardly 



,•«♦»%! V SUch books would be useles s lumber in a library 



ntended as an acljiinct to the herbarium. Nor does the general 



iin n +u „* a- t t ™ ou i'i' 1 .y "us aenciency, ior, iroin m* 



death of Sir Joseph Banks in 1820 until the passing of the 



S ?/ n C V n l 847 V * WaS Sim ^ an ^ °* g™c P e ™ * lie P art 



Sr sr to n? epo 2 it a c °py of his issues in the cbief 



i a Uonal library. Therefore between these dates the library of 

 L^^/^r^^.^^PP^^ingly poor in our native 



which ought to be there, but are not. This state of things is not 



