Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/27

 Rh Turning now to the relative location of the subjects that remain under "Biology, Ethnology," their arrangement scarcely appears natural. A preferable one would appear to be "Origin and Beginnings of Life," "Properties of Living Matter," "Homologies," "Evolution". To these might be added headings for Pathology (in so far as due to causes, or producing effects, common to plants and animals), and Distribution both in space (Geographical) and in time (Geological) in so far as these affect the problems of Biology.

Divisions 580 (Botany) and 590 (Zoology) show a want of balance in eight sub-divisions being devoted to classification alone, and one only to the Physiological and Structural departments of the Sciences. The latter sub-division is overcrowded to a most inconvenient degree.

It may be noted that the order of succession is reversed in the classification of plants and of animals, passing from higher to lower forms in the former, from lower to higher in the latter.

Bentham and Hooker's Genera Plantarum, the authority followed in the arrangement of the Natural Orders in Botany, will probabty retain its well-deserved position in English-speaking countries for years to come. But in the Natural Sciences there is not yet a stable classification; and among plants especially it is most difficult to determine which orders should be regarded as the most highly developed. Is it then advisable to stereotype in the libraries a classification that is liable to great changes?

Under Zoology there is a section "599·9, Bimana". This would appear to be the proper location of the "Natural History Man".

Returning for a moment to the "Physiological" sub-divisions under each of the two Sciences, we find that it is divided into i. Physiology; 2. Pathology; 3. Embryology; 4. Morphology and Comparative Anatomy; 5. Habits; 6. Economic; 7. Organography and Descriptive Anatomy; 8. Histology; 9. Geographical Distribution.

It is needless to dwell on this arrangement as by no means placing together the groups naturally related to one another.

The Anatomy, Histology, and Physiology of Man are not to be found under Zoology, as one might expect, but under Medicine, as 611 and 612.

The Economic sections of Botany and Zoology are much restricted, the useful products being distributed under such headings as 615, Materia Medica; 630-39, Agriculture; 664,