
          Early Hort. Lit

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half of all the entries, but of course they duplicate many works in the Department of
Agriculture and other American libraries. But inasmuch as the British Museum has such a
large number of early works, not only in English but in other languages, it is probably
the most important repository for this kind of literature. It would therefore be worth
while to detail an expert cataloger to personally examine the four or five hundred works
not located in Washington, and also to check other titles with British Museum copies, to
determine whether they are altogether identical or genuine variants.

I have stated the necessity of using a single, perfect copy, for the type entry of
each work, and the risk of assuming that other examples listed in catalogs are actually
identical. While there is no objection to noting added locations for rare books when
carefully distinguished from the type copy; there is on the other hand very little advantage
in merely multiplying copies. The present list gives many locations for a lot
of common books and even some very notable ones, but it is obviously impossible to give
the location of all existing copies of any work; nor is it usually desirable.

Few of these books can be freely loaned, but most of them are available for 
reference 
through microfilm and photostat services. Hence it would be useful to indicate all
the titles located in a few big centers like the Library of Congress, Department of Agriculture, 
British Museum, and Bibliothèque Nationale; with added locations for books
of which only two or three copies are supposed to exist. For instance, this list gives
eleven locations for Parkinson’s ’’Paradisus” (1629), and I believe other copies exist in
the United States alone. It would answer every important need to give its location in
the Library of Congress, British Museum, and Bibliothèque Nationale. But I know several
books so rare that all their locations should be fully given.

I do not advise extensive cataloging in the Bibliothèque Nationale, although in my
early years of work on this project I fully expected to do it myself. But in the first
place, it has usually required an inordinate amount of time to examine books at the Paris
library. And furthermore, its author catalog has been issued so rapidly between the wars
that it can be counted on to cover most of the books we are interested in. It does not
give anonymous and title entries, but it often illuminates them by references. When interrupted
in 1939 it had almost completed the letter ”R”, and if it is soon resumed at
its former rate of progress, it will be finished in a year or so, and will furnish data
on many important works in the latter part of our author list on horticulture.
        