we choose, of the vast number of publications that are not published.

Take a single example of the failure of even large and imposing volumes
to be included in the "American Catalogue," for whose aid, librarians are
so immeasurably indebted to the enterprise of its publishers. A single
publishing house west of New York, printed and circulated in about four
years time, no less than thirty-two elaborate and costly histories, of
western counties and towns, not one of which was ever recorded by title
in our only comprehensive American bibliography. Why was this? Simply
because the works referred to were published only as subscription books,
circulated by agents, carefully kept out of booksellers' hands, and never
sent to the Eastern press for notice or review. When circumstances like
these exist as to even very recent American publications (and they are
continually happening) is it any wonder that our bibliographies are
incomplete?

Perhaps some will suggest that there must be one record of American
publications which is complete, namely, the office of Copyright at
Washington. It is true that the titles of all copyright publications are
required by law to be there registered, and copies deposited as soon as
printed. It is also true that a weekly catalogue of all books and other
copyright publications is printed, and distributed by the Treasury, to
all our custom-houses, to intercept piratical re-prints which might be
imported. But the books just referred to were not entered for copyright
at all, the publishers apparently preferring the risk of any rival's
reprinting them, rather than to incur the cost of the small copyright
fee, and the deposit of copies. In such cases, there is no law requiring
publishers to furnish copies of their books. The government guarantees no
monopoly of publication, and so cannot exact a _quid pro quo._, however
much it might inure to the interest of publisher and author to have the
work seen and noticed, and preserved beyond risk of perishing (unless
printed on wood-pulp paper) in the Library of the United States.

If such extensive omissions of the titles of books sometimes important,
can now continually occur in our accepted standards of national
bibliography, what shall we say of times when we had no critical
journals, no publishers' trade organs, and no weekly, nor annual, nor
quinquennial catalogues of American books issued? Must we not allow, in
the absence of any catalogues worthy of th