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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



V.- The Dating of Periodicals. 

 Considering the importance which attaches in questions of 

 priority to the dates of the publication of new species, it is sur- 

 prising how little care is taken, even in some of our most useful 

 periodicals, to place these on record. A few examples — for I do not 

 propose to treat the matter at any length — will make this clear, 

 and will, it is hoped, lead to reform in cases where reform is 

 necessary. 



As an instance of the worst kind, I will cite Engler's Botanische 

 Jahrhih-her. The parts of this are carefully dated on the cover, but 

 no date appears in the text ; when the volume is bound, the covers 

 are usually destroyed, and it then becomes impossible to ascertain 

 the date of any special page, especially as the title-page bears only 

 the year of publication for the volume. The inconvenience arising 

 is intensified by the facts that a very large number of new species 

 are published in the Jahrbucher, and that the intervals at which it 

 is issued are irregular. 



Mulpighia is another example, in some respects even worse than 

 the foregoing. Although styled " rassegna mensuale," the volume 

 dated 1893 was issued in six parts, of which four contained two 

 fascicles, one one, and one three. The last is dated on its wrapper 

 1894, yet the volume has 1893 on its cover! There is nowhere 

 any indication of the month in which publication took place, and 

 no means of ascertaining the limits of each "fascicle." It would 

 surely be better to omit from the wrapper the misleading word 

 "mensuale." 



The Botaniska Notiser and Botanisches Centralblatt appear at first 

 sight to be undated, but the date will be found at the end of the 

 last page of each number, and is thus permanently preserved, 

 although it is liable to be overlooked. 



The Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, if judged by its 

 wrappers, would prove very misleading : of the twelve numbers for 

 1893, only three appeared in the months to which they are there 

 accredited. Here, however, the remedy is supplied by the Stationery 

 Office, of which it is an official issue, by figures at the foot of the 

 first page of each number, showing the actual date of printing : 

 thus the number bearing at its head "February and March, 1893," 

 has at the bottom of the same page "5/93," showing that the 

 actual publication took place in May. This, again, is likely to be 

 overlooked, for it is not unreasonable to suppose that monthly 

 journals will at any rate appear some time during the month whose 

 name they bear. 



This, however, is by no means always the case with the Annals 

 of Botany, which, from a bibliographical point of view, has always 

 been singularly unsatisfactory. The month in which publication 

 is supposed to have taken place is given at the foot of the first page 

 of each part, but this is often very misleading. The number dated 

 "Nov. 1888," for example, did not appear until January, 1889; 



