and the great importance of making it more readily accessible,
and have had in contemplation for some time the beginning of a
card index to all our periodicals on the same general plan as
that of Rieth's Repertorium. I have, however, been unable to
obtain sufficient force to cover the whole ground, but have
selected about one hundred and fifty journals, notably those
upon the subjects of chemistry, electricity and engineering,
both in English and foreign languages, the indexing of which
has been in progress since the first of January. This number
includes substantially all the valuable material in our
possession in the English language, not only journals, but
transactions of societies, all the electrical journals and
nearly all the chemical in foreign languages. This index will
be kept open to the public as soon as sufficient material has
accumulated. In general plan it will be alphabetical,
following nearly the arrangement of the periodical portion of
the surgeon general's catalogue. I shall depart from the
strictly alphabetical plan sufficiently to group under such
important subjects as chemistry, electricity, engineering,
railroads, etc., all the subdivisions of the art, so that the
electrical investigator, for instance, will not be obliged to
travel from one end of the alphabet to the other to find the
divisions of generators, conductors, dynamos, telephones,
telegraphs, etc., and in the grouping of the classes of
applied science the office classification of inventions will,
as a rule, be adhered to, the subdivisions being, of course,
arranged in alphabetical order under their general head and
the title of the several articles also arranged alphabetically
by authors or principal words.