5 



NOTES ON BIBLIOGRAPHY, PUBLICATION AND 

 NOMENCLATURE. 



C. DAVIES SHERBORN. 



My friend Mr. Sheppard has asked me to put a few notes 

 together on subjects with which I have to deal in my daily 

 work in connection with Bibliog^raphy, Publication, and 

 Nomenclature, in order to show that the confusion and diffi- 

 culties which exist are by no means so easy to eliminate as 

 many suppose. 



When compiling- a Bibliography of any subject it is neces- 

 sary to quote the Author's name in full, using some publication 

 of acknowledged accuracy such as the Catalogue of the Libraries 

 of the British Museum (Natural History), compiled by Mr. B. B. 

 Woodward. The title of the paper should be precisely that 

 employed by the author, and should not be mutilated in any 

 way whatsoever. The title of the Journal from which the paper 

 is extracted should be quoted in accordance with some recog- 

 nised system or authority, as e.g.^ the lists of abbreviations 

 employed by the Geological Record or Zoological Record ; and 

 such abbreviation should be sufficiently full as to be intelligible 

 alike to the layman as to the Librarian. ' P.Z.S.' for example 

 is not enough, but ' Proc. Zool. Soc. (Lond.) ' is comprehensive 

 and intelligible to everyone. The word (Lond.) is inserted 

 in ( ) because it does not occur in the title, and is necessary to 

 distinguish the London publication from any other that may 

 €xist in other English-speaking lands. If the Periodical or 

 Academy from which the Paper is extracted be issued in parts, 

 it will be needful to quote the part-number and its date, because 

 the date on the title-page of the completed volume may be a 

 collective one and quite misleading as to accurate date of pub- 

 lication of a particular page. For this reason all Librarians 

 bind the volumes of Periodicals and Academies with their part- 

 wrappers in position despite the fact that they interfere some- 

 what with the appearance of the bound volume. Much con- 

 fusion in nomenclature exists to-day from the neglect of this 

 simple precaution by the older custodians of books, and it is 

 often extremely difficult to obtain an original and perfect set 

 to work from for nomenclatorial purposes. The same remarks 

 apply to separate works which are issued in parts, and even 

 now it is impossible to quote accurately Agassiz and Desor's 

 French or German editions of Sowerby's ' Mineral Conchology * 



J908 January i. 



