COST OF BIOLOGICAL BOOKS IN 1928 



601 



this increase. In fact it seems likely that 

 it will not be desirable to increase signifi- 

 cantly the amount of space given to book 

 reviews . in future volumes over that 

 allotted in Volume III, though if our 

 readers have ideas on this subject we shall 

 be glad to hear them. 



Coming to the prices given in Table 1, 

 the first thing which strikes the eye is 

 that the "Other countries" group stands 

 at the top, with an average price per page 

 far out of line with the rest of the table. 

 This average is, however, not a fair 

 representation of the actual facts. Its 

 high value of z.16 cents per page is to an 

 undue extent determined by two expensive 

 books, one costing $16.70, the other 

 $35.00. Each contains many plates. 

 Leaving these two books out of the 

 reckoning, as may fairly be done on the 

 ground that they are special treatises not 

 belonging in the average run of biological 

 books, the average price per page of the 

 "Other countries" books becomes 1.13 

 cents as shown in Table x. With this 

 change Germany heads the list, its average 

 topping slightly that for the English- 

 American books, which in the two 

 previous years have been the most expen- 

 sive. 



The sample of British Government 

 publications reviewed this year was small 

 and the books were higher priced per 

 page, on the average, than either Ameri- 

 can or English commercially published 

 books. But the emphasis here should be 

 on the smallness of the sample, which 

 undoubtedly does not give an entirely 

 fair representation of the case. It must 

 however be said that in 19x7 the British 

 Government publications which we re- 

 ceived were relatively high in price, four 

 times as high, in point of fact, as United 

 States Government publications. As 

 usual the biological books published by 

 the United States Government stand at 



the bottom of the list, and next to them 

 the French books. French scientific 

 books are still marvelously cheap, as com- 

 pared with the commercially published 

 books of the rest of the world . 



Turning now to a consideration of the 

 trends in prices shown in Table z it should 

 be first noted that two groups show a 

 consistent and, to the consumer, pleasing 

 record . These are England and the United 

 States Government. In both cases the 

 average price per page each year is lower 

 than it was the year before. In 19x8 the 

 English commercially published books 

 cost 4.4 per cent less per page than they 

 did in 192.7, and 14.8 per cent less than 



TABLE i 



Prices oj biological books, 1928 



Other countries 



Germany 



English-American . . 

 British Government 



United States 



England 



France 



U. S. Government.. 



TOTAL 



TOTAL 



PAGES 



COST 



5>*77 



$111-93 



2.0,964 



3IO 



78 



z, 7 66 



40 



2-5 



5i7 



6 



50 



64,810 



74i 



88 



10,602. 



"5 



36 



11,750 



52- 



70 



5,568 



11 



65 



cents 

 2.. 16 

 I.48 

 I.46 

 1.2.6 

 1. 14 

 I.09 

 O.45 

 O.ZI 



they did in 19x6. The corresponding 

 percentage decreases in prices for United 

 States Government books were iz.5 and 

 31.3 percent. 



On the other hand there has been, dur- 

 ing these three years, an equally consistent 

 and steady increase in the average price 

 per page of commercially published Ger- 

 man and French biological books. Ger- 

 man biological books, judged by our sam- 

 ples, were 13 .3 per cent higher in 19x8 than 

 in 192.7, and 35.8 per cent higher in 19x8 

 than in 1916. The corresponding percent- 

 age increases in the price of French biolog- 

 ical books were 2.5.0 and 2.8.6 per cent. In 

 the case of the French books the absolute 



