up nothing though the pearl grounds be the best, and the catalogues are acknowledged to be surpassed by those of no other large public library. Something akin to our scheme, but a distant relation of it, has been attempted by the Royal Society in its extensive Index to the Scientific Papers in the periodicals and transactions of all nations; and by the South Kensington Museum in its Universal Art Catalogue. Both are printed, and any library or student may have them, but these creditable works lack scope and execution, being mere lists and not bibliographical catalogues. They are long paces however in the right direction.

Bibliography is fast becoming an exact science, and not a whit too soon. It is high time to separate it from mere catalogue making. It is becoming a necessity to both the scholar and the collector (they are not always identical.) Indeed every considerable library should have two distinct catalogues exclusive of its shelf and administrative lists. The one raisonné or bibliographical, and the other its index, the latter so constructed as to serve all practical purposes in ordinary cases for a finding, record, and common reference catalogue. They should both be alphabetical, and the titles in the one without exception, be under headings the same as in the other. Let the one be full and descriptive, the other small, compact, and full of condensed brevity. By full titles with collations and descriptions is not meant anything so sprawling, irrelevant, slipshod and lumpy as the sumptuous works of Dr Dibdin, Ander Schiffahrt, or of others more recently published, printed with the same stupendous nihilities and vacuities; but tidy, exact, compact and comprehensive, showing in a nutshell all the reader wishes to know or see, short of the books themselves.

It is not well to put a library into its catalogue, but better to put a catalogue into the library. A cum

bersome catalogue, like a big thick-paper dictionary is a nuisance. A description of a rare and costly book should tell precisely not only what constitutes a perfect copy, but when applied to an imperfect one should indicate exactly what is wanting, and that in the briefest possible terms, eschewing spacings, broken lines and all bibliographical quiddling. These last may be left to booksellers' and auctioneers' catalogues, and to those who have notions to vend and ventilate by catalogues. We have seen a bibliographical work of considerable pretensions, recently published, wherein many of the titles, long enough perhaps to fill a line or line and a-half, are expanded by broken bits, points and printer's quads into five or six lines, against all the rules of workmanlike printing, thus filling 150 instead of fifty pages. Such printing cannot be too highly condemned, and such cataloguing can have no pretensions to bibliography, especially as in most cases little information is given beyond the bare intimation of the existence of a particular edition, with name of the printer, place, date and size. What every collector and librarian wish particularly to know is omitted.

At length this preliminary flourish brings us to the announcement of our proposed remedy, which for the want of a better name we call for the present

PHOTO-BIBLIOGRAPHY,

or a new application of Photography to Bibliography, a higher and better class of catalogues. It is not intended to supersede, but rather to supplement, improve, systematize and elevate the present method of cataloguing our libraries and museums, public and private. It is the result of long study and numberless devices to accomplish our bibliographical aim of fulness and perfect accuracy with reasonable cost of money, space and time. We have not yet solved, we confess, all the difficulties

that have presented themselves, but we are sufficiently advanced after many months practice to pronounce with considerable confidence, our system of higher class cataloguing to be safe, simple, easy, accurate, expeditious and cheap. Without going here into unnecessary details suffice it now to say that we claim as our invention a new application of photography, and apparatus so contrived and constructed as to enable any sharp bibliographer with one photographer and one lens to collect the titles of the rarest and costliest books, of the average sizes, at the rate of from two to three thousand a week, that is to say, from five to ten times as fast as the best cataloguer can do the work by handwriting, and at the same time immeasurably better.

The plan is to reduce all the titles, maps, woodcuts, or whatever is desired to copy, by one uniform scale. This reduction is regulated by the printer, who declares from many specimens exhibited to him, that a reduction of two-thirds will give him excellent copy, far better than the average manuscript. Our titles then are precisely one-third the dimensions, or one-ninth the superfices of the originals. Nine is found by experience to be the most convenient multiple, as it avoids fractions, and suits the printer. If the printer be pleased, most other readers will not object to the size. To those who cannot see glasses are respectfully recommended, while those who will not see the photograms are referred to the printed titles which accompany them. Our system is to clear up as we go, and make an alphabetical card catalogue,' something after the manner that is now generally adopted in our principal libraries. The photograms every day as they are collected are trimmed and laid down on pieces of common cheap writing paper cut to the exact size of the thin cards, about four by six inches, which we intend to use. The bibliographer then adds in manuscript the heading of the title, the translation (if it be desired) the collation, description, list of maps and plates, notes, or

whatever he deems necessary or important. These titles then go to the printer who prints the whole, both the photogram and the manuscript, in such a manner as to leave room for mounting the photogram, and in the prescribed form, in large or small type according to the space required. This method gets rid of all revising and transcribing the titles, while the cost of printer's corrections is greatly reduced. The printer then prints as many copies as are required, some on thin cards and others on strong thin paper for laying down in volumes. The photograms printed on very thin paper are then laid down in the blank places left for them on the cards, and the titles are done, well done and quickly.

Now there is no reason why these titles should not be perfect of their kind, and be produced at moderate cost as fast as they are demanded. An alphabetical catalogue · so made is always perfect as far as it goes, and may be from time to time enlarged to any extent. The titles may be kept separate, or be mixed with the slip titles of any library. They may be shuffled and arranged in any order, class or subject. Index and cross reference cards may be added in print or manuscript. Press marks and additions in manuscript to adapt the titles to the particular copies of any library may be added by hand.

Should a printed catalogue be made, these titles will supply the best copy, on short notice for the greater part of the work, the rest, in the way of addition or compression, may be done in the usual way by hand. By them books in the library can be compared to a dead certainty with copies in any other library. The photograms instead of being laid down on cards may be used for illustrating catalogues or other books, and as the negatives are kept may be supplied in large or small quantities. They serve admirably for comparing type, woodcuts, engravings, and general art purposes. They are very beautiful, and may well serve designers and artists for hints and models. But will they be beautiful

for ever? Will they not fade? We answer that some of them in twenty, fifty or a hundred years, if printed by the ordinary silver process may fade. But they may, as well as anything else, be printed by one of the permanent processes. The negatives are numbered and so arranged on shelves like books that they may be referred to instantly. One shelf eight feet long will hold the negatives of 10,000 titles, as we know by experience.

Our collection of photograms already made comprises many of the rarest books relating to America and the great discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, such as the works of Marco Polo, Columbus, Vespucci, Varthema, Cortes, Enciso, Peter Martyr, Oviedo, Lopez de Gomara, Las Casas, and very many others; also the great collections of voyages, Grynaeus, Ramusio, Hakluyt, De Bry, Hulsius, Purchas, Haertgerts, Saeghman, Thevenot; the geographical works of Ptolemy, Gerard Jodé, Ortelius, Mercator, Hondius, and others; rare books on the East and West Indies, the Indian languages, Mexico, Peru, Brasil, Virginia, New England, Canada, Japan, China, Russia, and other countries; early Bibles, Psalms, and Testaments. We have also in our portfolio photograms of most of the early editions of Shakspeare, Milton, Bunyan, Raleigh, and others, with a good sprinkling of early English, French, Spanish, and Italian poetry and romances.

When we have say 5000 titles relating to America, or any other extensive subject, it is proposed to print one-line Alphabetical Index Catalogues in small type, averaging about seventy letters in a line, and seventy lines on a page, no one title to occupy more than a single line, but in all cases to fill that line, with the name of the author or the heading, the title, the edition, the name of printer, place, date, and size, or so much as can be compressed into one line. This catalogue will serve as a price list of our card titles.

A single example of these photograms is given in the