mation which the former do not pretend to supply. In the case of this class of work, the Museum cataloguers have usually disdained the sine loco et anno' which figures so constantly in all other bibliographies. The book, if necessary, has been read through, and a dozen other books examined, the type compared with that of other works suspected to have the same date and place of printing, and every resource exhausted, before it has been concluded to leave these points, or any others on which research had a chance of throwing light, unsettled. It is not strange, therefore, that a single title should sometimes have constituted, according to Mr. Panizzi's evidence, the work of one man for an entire day. Nor has this degree of care been confined to rare and early printed works, which are alone the subject of most bibliographies. The principle has been applied just as strictly to the most insignificant publications, and the care which has hitherto been thought necessary only in the case of a Caxton or a Pynson, is exercised in the New Catalogue with that absolute impartiality, as to the present importance of a work, which we have already declared to be the first qualification of the librarian of a national collection aspiring to universality.

Among many other kinds of incidental value thus accruing to the Catalogue, we may mention that it now constitutes by far the highest and most extensive of existing authorities for the forms of all kinds of names, historically, or in any other way known; and that it contains an unequalled mass of information as to the authorship of anonymous works, a point of no mean consideration; for, according to M. Barbier, the proportion of such works to the whole of literature is not less than one-third. So vast is the mass of information on these two points, that we have convinced ourselves, by approximate calculation, that, were any first-rate continental library now to commence its alphabetical catalogue, at least a thousand pounds would be saved by expending that sum in obtaining if it could be so obtained a transcript of that portion of the New Catalogue which is now in the Reading Room, as a work of reference on these matters only. If we take into consideration the various other species of information, concerning that great mass of books which must be common to all large libraries, we must come to the conclusion that the bibliographers of the British Museum have in reality catalogued the major part of all other considerable collections. Assuming that, in the process of forming their New Catalogues,' the Museum rules are adopted, the librarians of other national libraries have nothing henceforward to do but to write the titles of works not in the Museum.

6

The only doubt which could reasonably arise, with these librarians, as to the feasibility of adopting the ninety-one rules -together with at least ninety-one other canons of common 'sense' which must have been fixed during the progress of the Museum Catalogue, as unforeseen occasions occurred, is as to that portion of them which regulates the treatment of anonymous works. The Trustees, in over-ruling Mr. Panizzi's wish to adopt, in these cases, the simple first-substantive or first-principal-word system, so successfully employed by Audiffredi, Barbier, Kayser, and many other cataloguers, practically departed from the alphabetical, and caused a partial introduction of the subject or class system. We should ourselves have preferred the simpler plan, but there are certainly advantages attending the other one of which is the avoidance of the interminably long lists of works under the same word, which must sometimes have arisen. In Barbier's Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes' there are only about 22,000 entries in all, and yet some of the headings are inconveniently long; for example, the anonymous works, in which Histoire,' Lettre' or Lettres,' and 'Mémoire' or 'Mémoires,' are the first words, are respectively 1085, 1221, and 859 in number. What would have been the extent of some headings had this principle been adopted in a catalogue of a million entries, one-third of them being for anonymous works? These long headings are the inevitable evil of all large catalogues, under whatever system, and we do not see how the evil could have been further reduced in the Museum Catalogue. We therefore conclude that, whatever advantages might originally have attached to Mr. Panizzi's original plan, they may now be safely waived by foreign librarians, for the sake of the immense gain of adopting the rules, and the mass of titles written and arranged under those rules, in the lump.*

We regret that we have little room to notice the various curious problems in the statistics of literature which are rendered by this Catalogue easy of solution. To one we have already

of

*It is well that it should be known that the formation of these rules was a work of deliberation not incommensurate with the magnitude of the labour they were to regulate. After several years what may be considered to have been tentative cataloguing, it was determined to 'codify' the results of that experience. When we 'drew up these rules,' says Mr. Panizzi, 'easy as they may seem, my 'assistants and myself worked all the day long for weeks; we never went out of the library from morning till night. . . . We worked the whole day, and at night too, and on Sundays besides, to submit 'the rules, from time to time, to the sub-committee of Trustees.'

alluded, namely, the comparative spaces occupied in the world of literature by different authors, subjects, and classes of subjects. No other existing catalogue would cast much light upon this question; but the principle on which the Museum Library has been mainly formed, namely, that of maintaining an equable rate of approximation to the idea of a collection containing every edition of every thing that has been written on every subject, constitutes its Catalogue a tolerably fair test in this matter; so that the facts that, out of, say, two thousand volumes of Catalogue, the titles of works by or about Shakspeare or Luther occupy three volumes; Aristotle or Cicero two volumes; Horace or Erasmus one volume, may be taken as equivalent to statements that the proportions of universal printed literature directly occupied by those writers are respectively about one in seven hundred, one in a thousand, and one in two thousand. A rough comparison of a few headings of the Catalogue with special bibliographies, would lead us to suppose that the Museum contains somewhere about one-fourth of extant literature. But we must leave the accurate determination of this and other curious questions to the industry of those who, on the full completion of the Catalogue, will doubtless hasten to reap the rich harvest offered by it to various classes of investigators.

It only remains for us to notice certain mechanical arrangements of the Catalogue. As three or four copies of it are wanted, a great saving of time and expense is wrought by the simultaneous transcription of as many copies of each title, on the principle of the manifold writer.' These titles, after being written on slips of very strong and thin transparent paper, are mounted, for the sake of additional strength, on blank slips of the same size and of the same paper, and are then laid down, five to a leaf, in volumes of thick cartridge paper. Being pasted only by the upper and lower rims to the cartridge folios, they are easily removed by the insertion of the end of a paper-knife at either of the unpasted ends, whenever it becomes necessary to intercalate a greater number of fresh titles between any two of them than the space which was left will admit. We understand that many of these slips have already been taken up and re-inserted as often as twenty times, and are still good. We direct attention to this plan because it seems very considerably to affect the question of the ultimate feasibility of printing. The idea of printing the Catalogue in the ordinary way has probably been abandoned; for to do so would be to nullify rather than crown the labours of a quarter of a century. In one year the Catalogue, so printed, would be incomplete; in ten years it would be obsolete. But no such inconvenience would attach to the VOL. CIX. NO. CCXXI.

titles separately printed and laid down, for removal at pleasure, according to the present mode. There is no denying that literature would be vastly the gainer by the possession of three or four hundred, instead of only three or four copies of the Catalogue, especially in a form which would allow of indefinite re-arrangements of its integral parts; and the Museum itself would save the costly process of retranscription, which must inevitably occur from time to time; for the wear and tear of the three or four manuscript copies is great and incessant. There is no cause for hurry in the determination of this question of ultimate printing. The MS. copies now in existence will last a good while, and the first business of the establishment obviously is, fully to complete the work upon its present plan.

It is not often that projectors, even when possessed of the rare talents and energies of the present chief librarian, have been so fortunate as he has. In handing over the keepership of the Printed Book Department to Mr. Winter Jones, Mr. Panizzi must have felt an enviable satisfaction on considering the rapid and almost complete fulfilment of his aspirations for 'forming in a few years a public library containing from 600,000 to 700,000 printed volumes, giving the necessary means of information on all branches of human learning, from 'all countries, in all languages, properly arranged, substantially and well bound, minutely and fully catalogued, easily accessible, and yet safely preserved.' To the resources of a great nation, eager for the acquisition and preservation of all branches of knowledge, Mr. Panizzi has applied a most comprehensive acquaintance with books combined with extraordinary administrative ability, and the Library of the British Museum will be a lasting monument of the services he has rendered to his adopted country.

We cannot take leave of this subject without expressing a hope that the proposal for separating the natural history departments of the Museum from the departments of literature and antiquities, which has been under the consideration of the Trustees and the Government, will be finally adopted. No single locality can embrace the whole range of human knowledge: the present building is quite insufficient for the double purpose: and it is of the utmost advantage in the vast metropolis of the British Empire to disseminate the great institutions for the studies of the learned and the instruction of the people. Whenever this separation can be effected, instead of lessening the importance of the British Museum by dividing it, the nation will find itself in possession of two museums, each of them being more exclusively devoted to the ends they are respectively adapted to promote.

ART. VIII.-1. General Outline of the Organisation of the Animal Kingdom, and Manual of Comparative Anatomy. By THOMAS RYMER JONES, F.R.S. (Second Edition.) London: 1855. 2. On Parthenogenesis, or the Successive Production of Procreating Individuals from a Single Ovum, introduced to the Hunterian Lectures on Generation and Development for the Year 1849. Delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, by RICHARD OWEN, F.R.S. &c. London: 1849. 3. The Rambles of a Naturalist on the Coasts of France, Spain, and Sicily. By A. DE QUATREFAGES. Translated (with the Author's sanction and co-operation), by E. C. OTTÉ. 2 vols.

1857.

4. Sea-Side Studies at Ilfracombe, Tenby, the Scilly Isles, and Jersey. By GEORGE H. LEWES. 1858.

5. The Master-Builder's Plan, or the Principles of Organic Architecture, as indicated in the Typical Forms of Animals. By GEORGE OGILVIE, M.D. London: 1858.

IN

Na recent number of this Review we took occasion, from some remarkable works then before us, to comment on those present conditions of physical science which more especially mark its progress onwards, and the larger scope and higher spirit now given to its pursuit. Our view, however, was then confined almost wholly to the inorganic part of creation, and to those sciences which treat of matter unendowed with life, and of the great natural forces or powers-gravitation, light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and chemical force-which we recognise by and through their various action on the material world.

We have now before us another series of works (to which very many more might be added) recording the present state of our knowledge of matter organised into life; of that vast domain of animal and vegetable existence which lies around us, presenting a thousand problems to our reason, and almost appalling contemplation by its extent and multiplicity. This short and seemingly simple word-Life, does, in truth, in itself include the greatest of all the problems submitted to human thought. All distinctions and diversities are trifling in comparison with this one line, which separates inanimate matter from the living organisms created out of it; possessing properties and powers of endless variety; and, above all, endowed with that wonderful power of reproduction which maintains the continuity of the species, while individual forms are successively passing