Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/176

 Scientific Text-Books, and the Disposal of Editions Out of Date. 1 THERE are many who do not realise the vast difference there is between the meaning of a "new edition" of a standard novel and the same of a scientific text-book. Yet thereby hangs one of the most difficult problems in library work. A book of fiction or a poem, be it good or bad, is the masterpiece of an individual ; its value in the market depends on the man who wrote it, upon the ingenuity he has shown in contriving the plot of his story, on the extent to which he has fashioned his characters in accordance with those we meet in real life, and on his power of depicting scenes from life as they are, not as he thinks they ought to be. To speak generally, the first edition seals the book's fate for better or for worse ; later editions can only be of value in so far that they are issued while the author is still living, contain his own corrections, and such latter when they are confined to the merest details in style. So the first and early editions of the works of Dickens, of Thackeray, of Scott, of Tennyson and of Browning will never be cumbersome on the shelves of any library. For there is nothing new to be discovered in human nature : the wishes, ambitions, schemes, loves, hopes and fears of mankind are now as they have ever been. Trite as the above remarks may seem to the majority of those present, they are only made to emphasise the gulf that is fixed between the domain of the imagination and that of science, or the pursuit of truth in literature. We enter, as it were, into another world when we come to deal with books relating to science in all its varied aspects. Here all is change and progress. Nothing remains still. The biologist, or zoologist, as he used to be called, sits down and writes his book. It is duly announced, printed and published, and perchance has a rapid sale. All the medical schools and scientific academies purchase it, and eager students complain because "more copies are not on the text- book shelf." But ere the student has digested its contents for his next examination, the author, or some other fellow-worker, 1 Read at a Monthly Meeting of the Library Association, January, 1894.