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AMERICAN COLLEGE FRATERNITIES
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duced a fraternity catalogue, which was published in 1879, and gave a full biography of every member, living or dead, the facts about whom could be ascertained by personal research. In addition, there was a table of consanguinity, showing the ties of relationship existing between the members and a geographical distribution of the membership.

This publication set an unusual standard of completeness. Other fraternities at once took up the work in this same direction. Two years later, ΒΘΤ produced a catalogue not so complete in detail, but involving more labor on account of the imperfect records of Southern and Western colleges in which a majority of its chapters were situated. ΦΔΘ soon completed a similar task under the same or greater difficulties. ΑΔΦ in 1882 published a semi-centennial catalogue, adding to the elaborate detail of the catalogues just mentioned the record of its members who served in the Civil War, a bibliography of its literature, and much historical matter. ΔΤΔ, ΔΥ, ΖΨ, ΧΨ, and other fraternities have since produced catalogues which are monuments of painstaking research and intellectual labor. In 1889, ΨΥ published another catalogue superior even to its predecessor in the elaborateness of its detail, and in 1890 ΔΚΕ, after long preparation, published a bulky volume of some 1,700 pages, leaving nothing to be desired in the way of completeness, and which probably marks the point of extreme advance in this direction. Since then there has been a decided tendency to revert to the simplicity of former times, and to replace