pose,' and an Essay on the Origin of Idolatry and Astrology, with Elucidations of the Pagan Superstitions drawn from Hieroglyphics and the Metaphorical Construction of the Eastern Languages.' In 1827 he edited a volume of Transactions for the Society-the only one ever issued.

Those

Mr. Morison was appointed Librarian of the Perth Library; and when the library was housed in its new quarters along with the Literary and Antiquarian Society, he compiled a catalogue of its contents. The catalogue is an excellent example of the classified catalogue with author index, and shows Mr. Morison to have been a thoroughly capable librarian, and far ahead of most librarians of his day. From the preface we learn that the library was arranged on the shelves in classified order, in the same order as the catalogue, and the compiler quaintly says: 'There are as many opinions respecting the best mode of classing a library as there are tastes in literature itself, and every one is disposed to give pre-eminence to that branch to which he most frequently recurs. alone who have really attempted the task, and who know the difficulty of assigning places to works in which many subjects meet and intermingle, will treat with indulgence those imperfections to which every mode of arrangement must in some degree be subject.' Mr. Morison was a believer in the annotated catalogue, for he says: 'The proverbial dullness of a mere list of names of books has prompted the librarian to follow the example of those bibliographers who, by bibliographical or critical notes, have rescued catalogues from the humble station they were so long allowed to occupy, and given them a place in the history of literature.' Many of Morison's notes are valuable and informative.

The history of the Perth Library is a somewhat peculiar one. From Mr. Morison's catalogue we quote again : 'There probably does not exist in any other town in the kingdom an institution of the same description established on a similar foundation with the Perth Library. Perth

has the honour of having set the example of a library—the property not of any society of individuals, not even of the body of subscribers, but unalterably secured to the public by a deed of settlement and articles of agreement, which must for ever prevent it being turned aside from its original purpose, object, and destination-that of being at all times patent to every member of the community who subscribes to the regulations by which it is conducted.' For many years the library was in a flourishing condition, being well stocked with the best literature of the day; but on the opening up of railway communication with Edinburgh, a local bookseller started a subscription library in connection with some of the larger dealers there, and the subscribers to the Perth Library fell off. The library ultimately having fallen into debt was acquired, it is understood, by the Literary and Antiquarian Society, on payment of the debt, notwithstanding the unalterable articles of agreement,' and the Perth Library is now the property of a society of individuals.'

In addition to all this labour of love on behalf of these two institutions, Mr. Morison, in connection with his bookselling business, sold many valuable libraries by auction-being himself the auctioneer. The most notable of these sales was the dispersal in 1817 of the library of William Stewart, of Spoutwells, near Perth. The catalogue of the sale-prepared by Mr. Morison and printed by R. Morison-cost 35. 6d., and is a thick octavo of 381 pages. The library extended to 7,413 lots. This was at the time the largest private library ever dispersed in Scotland. The library contained many works from the Elzevir Press, a number of black-letter Bibles, Roy's 'Rede me and be nott Wrothe,' Langland's Vision of Pierce Plowman,' printed by Owen Rogers in 1561, a beautifully illuminated missal, and several Books of Hours, as well as a large number of standard works in general literature. The sale lasted for a month-several valuable books being acquired for the Literary and Antiquarian

Society, including the first or Shakespeare' edition of Holinshed's 'Chronicles.'

Mr. Morison established the well-known ink works at Perth, now the property of Mr. J. A. Todd. He had considerable chemical knowledge, and turned his attention to colour-printing on various textures; but he appears to have been in advance of his day, and did not reap any pecuniary advantage from his labours in this direction.

With David Morison the celebrity of the firm as a printing establishment may be said to have practically ceased. From 1815 to 1835 the business was carried on under the style and title of D. Morison, jun., and Co. Descendants of the family continued to have a connection with the business up to about 1874; but David Morison left Perth in 1837, and after his departure the energies of the firm were directed more towards the bookselling and stationery side of the business than towards its development as a printing and publishing concern.

JOHN MINTO.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM REVISED RULES FOR CATALOGUING.1

LTHOUGH men have written about the pleasures of book-collecting from the time of Richard de Bury, and plans for the arrangement of books were very frequent in the last century, little attention was paid to the making of rules for cataloguing until the necessity for these forced itself upon the attention of Sir Anthony Panizzi. Catalogues had mostly been made by individuals, and individuals saw no necessity for

1

Rules for Compiling the Catalogues in the Department of Printed Books in the British Museum.' Printed by order of the Trustees. 1900. Price One Shilling.

rules. When, however, Panizzi set to work in earnest at the preparation of that great work, the Complete Catalogue of the British Museum Library (the printing of which now, twenty-one years after his death, is nearly completed), he found that the many workers who were employed upon the Catalogue must have some rules to guide them, so that their labours might be uniform.

In the codification of these rules Panizzi had the assistance of several distinguished men, viz., Messrs. Thomas Watts, J. Winter Jones, Edward Edwards, and J. H. Parry, afterwards Serjeant Parry. The rules they drew up were laid before the Trustees in 1839 and printed in 1841.

It is amazing to us now to find what an uproar the publication of these celebrated rules raised. Some authorities objected to rules altogether—Mr. J. G. Cochrane was one of these-while others set to work jauntily to show how simple a matter it was to catalogue books without them. Mr. Payne Collier submitted to the Royal Commission twenty-five titles of commonplace books made in the course of an hour, with the result that, according to Mr. Winter Jones's scathing report, the average number of faults in his work amount to more than two to a title.

In this article, however, we have not to do with the original Ninety-one Rules, but with the Revised Rules just published. Still, it is necessary to point out the debt which Bibliography owes to the British Museum for the first codification of rules for cataloguing. At the same time we must remember that the rules were made for the British Museum alone. They have been used by others because they formed a model, but they were not made for others,

There is a considerable difference between a manuscript and a printed catalogue, and it must have been brought home to the editors when the printing of the Catalogue was commenced that some modification of the rules was necessary. In fact, a few alterations were at once made

which were described in a useful official pamphlet entitled 'Explanation of the System of the Catalogue.'

The revised rules just published number thirty-nine in all. They are much simpler than the original code, but the reduction in their number is also partly due to the omission of any detailed treatment of the order in which titles are to be entered in the Catalogue, a subject apparently left over to be dealt with later on. Beginning with the statement (Rule 1): "The General Catalogue of Printed Books is arranged as a Catalogue of Authors in the alphabetical order of their names, the arrangement of entries under each author being also essentially alphabetical," the new rules define the two kinds of entries of which the Catalogue is made up, viz., Main-Entries and Cross-References, and then the four different parts of which any main-entry may consist, Heading, Description, Imprint, and Note. Rules 4-23 are occupied with these divisions; Rules 24-31, with questions of Joint Authorship, Special Headings, Anonymous and Pseudonymous publications, and Collections of Laws; Rules 32-34, with Translations, Commentaries, Duplicates, and Re-issues; Rules 35-39, with dif ferent kinds of Cross-References. There is thus a real attempt at a logical arrangement, in contrast to the rather haphazard order of the older code.

Before offering any detailed criticism, it must be noted that certain of the old rules are so functional that they could not well be altered without disturbing the whole system of the Catalogue, even had the editors wished to alter them. For instance, although Panizzi had the assistance of many competent men, he possessed a very characteristic individuality, and the heading of Academies under which the publications of societies are arranged must have owed its origin to him. Such a heading could never have occurred to an Englishman, as there are no academies which publish transactions in England. But whether the new Revisers approved of this heading or not, the innumerable cross-references to it spread all over the