161 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



1732-1734. This, therefore, is the most complete 

 edition of the monographs of the Parisians, and it is 

 happily not difficult to obtain, although it cannot 

 compare in interest or execution with the first complete 

 edition of 1676. 



The booksellers of the seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries provoke the resentment and tax the labour of 

 the bibliographer by their loose methods of publication. 

 In the first instance the sheets were printed and issued 

 under the name of the responsible agent, but he retained 

 the right of farming them out to all who chose to apply 

 for them, the purchaser being permitted to print a new 

 title, and to publish the work from his own town, and 

 under his own name and date. This procedure was 

 naturally exploited for the profit of the unscrupulous, 

 and the case of Dr. William Cowper, who purchased 300 

 copies of the sheets of Bidloo's atlas, and sold them under 

 his own name as author, is familiar to students of the 

 history of anatomy. Thus it comes about that the same 

 work may be published a number of times, from many 

 centres, and under a variety of dates. Copies even of the 

 same issue may bear varying dates, an altered date, or 

 no date at all. The conscientious bibliographer, who sees 

 his leisure slipping away from him, but who dare not 

 assume the identity of editions he has not personally 

 examined, can only arraign the practice and submit to 

 his fate. And it does occasionally happen that he is 

 rewarded by some small detail he must otherwise have 

 missed. The monographs of the Parisians are a tedious 

 example of this pernicious custom, and I doubt whether, 

 even now, I have unravelled all the ramifications of this 

 sprawling" publication. After the issue of the completed 

 first edition in 1676, another edition was published at 

 Paris in 1682. The first English edition appeared in 



