Old Collector_. By W. H. Hyett, F.R.S.
Instead of a popular work on the
Mediterranean flora by a scientific man, as
might reasonably be expected, this is a
volume of translations from the Italian
and Latin poets. It is scarcely fair to
blame the compiler of the _Bibliotheca
Historio-Naturalis_ for having ranked
both these works among scientific treatises.
The English cataloguer who treated as a
botanical book Dr. Garnett's selection
from Coventry Patmore's poems, entitled
_Florilegium Amantis_, could claim less
excuse for his blunder than the German
had. These misleading titles are no new
invention, and the great bibliographer
Haller was deceived into including the
title of James Howell's _Dendrologia, or
Dodona's Grove_ (1640), in his _Bibliotheca
Botanica_. Professor Otis H. Robinson
contributed a very interesting paper on the
``Titles of Books'' to the _Special Report
on Public Libraries in the United States of
America_ (1876), in which he deals very
fully with this difficulty of misleading titles,
and some of his preliminary remarks are