t, or early name of the place where
it was introduced. The work contains, in addition, a general table of the
periodicals of all countries, (of course not exhaustive) divided into
classes, and filling seventy-five pages. It closes with a "repertory of
the principal libraries of the entire world," and with an index to the
whole work, in which the early names in Latin, of all places where books
were printed, are interspersed in the alphabet, distinguished by italic
type, and with the modern name of each town or city affixed. This
admirable feature will render unnecessary any reference to the _Orbis
Latinus_ of Graesse, or to any other vocabulary of geography, to identify
the place in which early-printed books appeared. Stein is by no means
free from errors, and some surprising omissions. One cardinal defect is
the absence of any full index of authors whose books are cited.

There are also quite brief catalogues of works on bibliography in J.
Power's Handy Book about Books, London, 1870, and in J. Sabin's
Bibliography: a handy book about books which relate to books, N. Y.,
1877. The latter work is an expansion of the first-named.

We come now to the second class of our bibliographies, _viz._: those of
various countries. Here the reader must be on his guard not to be misled
into too general an interpretation of geographical terms. Thus, he will
find many books and pamphlets ambitiously styled "_Catalogue
Americaine_", which are so far from being general bibliographies of books
relating to America, that they are merely lists of a few books for sale
by some book-dealer, which have something American in their subject. To
know what catalogues are comprehensive, and what period they cover, as
well as the limitations of nearly all of them, is a necessary part of the
training of a bibliographer, and is essential to the librarian who would
economize his time and enlarge his usefulness.

Let us begin with our own country. Here we are met at the outset by the
great paucity of general catalogues of American literature, and the utter
impossibility of finding any really comprehensive lists of the books
published in the United States, during certain periods. We can get along
tolerably well for the publications within the last thirty years, which
nearly represent the time since systematic weekly bibliographical
journals have been published, containing lists of the current issues of
books. But for the period just before the Civil War, bac