Minor Notes.
_A Hint to Catalogue Makers._--Among the many excellent schemes proposed
for the arrangement and diffusion of common means of information, one
simple one appears to have been passed over by your many and excellent
correspondents. I will briefly illustrate an existing deficiency by an
example.
While collecting materials for a projected critical commentary on the
_Timaeus_ of Plato, I was surprised to find the commentary of
_Chalcidius_ wholly wanting in our library at Christ Church.
Subsequently (when I did not want it, having secured a better edition at
the end of Fabricius' _Hippolytus_) I discovered a fine copy of Badius
Ascensius' editio princeps, bound up with Aulus Gellius and Macrobius,
but utterly ignored in the Christ Church catalogue.
This instance shows the necessity of carefully examining the _insides_
of books, as well as the backs and title-pages, during the operation of
cataloguing. Our public libraries are rich in instances of a similar
oversight, and many an important and _recherche_ work is unknown, or
acquires a conventional rarity, through its concealment at the end of a
less valuable, but more bulky, treatise.
I have been aroused to the propriety of publishing this suggestion, by
purchasing, "dog cheap", a volume labelled _Petrus Crinitus_, but
containing _Hegesippus_ (_i.e._ the pseudo-Ambrosian translation from
Josephus) and the Latin grammarians at the end, all by the
afore-mentioned printer.