546 
[378 
378. 
REPORT OF A COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE BRITISH 
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, TO 
CONSIDER THE FORMATION OF A CATALOGUE OF PHILO 
SOPHICAL MEMOIRS. 
[From the Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, (1856), 
pp. 463—464.] 
The Committee were appointed—on the occasion of a communication from Professor 
Henry of Washington, containing a proposal for the publication of Philosophical 
Memoirs scattered throughout the Transactions of Societies in Europe and America, 
with the offer of cooperation on the part of the Smithsonian Institute, to the extent 
of preparing and publishing, in accordance with the general plan which might be 
adopted by the British Association, a Catalogue of all the American Memoirs on 
Physical Science—to consider the best system of arrangement, and to report thereon 
to the Council. 
The Committee are desirous of expressing their sense of the great importance 
and increasing need of such a Catalogue. 
They understand the proposal of the Smithsonian Institute to be, that a separate 
Catalogue should be prepared and published for America. 
In the opinion of the Committee, 
The Catalogue should embrace the Mathematical and Physical Sciences, but should 
exclude Natural History and Physiology, Geology, Mineralogy, and Chemistry, which 
would properly form the subject-matter of a distinct Catalogue or Catalogues. The 
difficulty of drawing the line would perhaps be greatest with regard to Chemistry 
and Geology; but the Committee would admit into the Catalogue memoirs not purely 
Chemical or Geological, but having a direct bearing upon the subjects of the Catalogue.