Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/121

This page needs to be proofread.

REVIEWS. 109 attitude of mind towards a bibliography is one of simple gratitude.' Without going so far as this, we are quite prepared to be grateful for the par- ticular bibliography which Sir George Gibb is recommending. Building on foundations laid by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, Miss Ballen has piled up an extraordinary mass of references to books and magazine articles, pamphlets and official reports relating to roads and road-making. Her work falls into two main sections; the first of them has a geographical basis, embracing General Works, and those dealing with Great Britain, England and Wales, London, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, with sub-setions in each case concerned with (a) history and description, (b) administration. The second main seftion is devoted to the Constru6tion and Repair of Roads and Streets, and the Traffic on Roads, and has sub-seftions on the Dust Problem and the Materials and kinds of Pavement, and other topics in which interest is now alive. Sir George Gibb is a little scornful at this attempt at classification, on the ground that writers on roads are c a discursive class,' and that students in search of references on a particular subje6l will not be able safely to omit examination of the entries in each group. The arrangement of the titles in each seflion is mainly chronological, but all the books of the same author in each branch are brought together to follow the first, a plan which saves space and has some other practical advan- tages, while criticism of it is disarmed by the addition of excellent indexes of authors and subjects. As she has attempted classification.