Complete and Up-to-Date.

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 139, 28 February 1903, Page 17

Complete and Up-to-Date.

There are ten times as many sciences and ten tames as many arts and trades as were known two hundred years ago, each equipped with a vocabulary of its own A special dictionary to each or these, though useful to him who follows one science or trade exclusively, would involve a small library for the general reader. For his purpose it is necessary to digest them into a single volume and then, as they are almost aU words w lth w hich the ordinary dictionary cannot dispense, it seems the simplest plan to dispense with the technical dictionary altogether, and come at first where you must come at last, i.c. — to the really first-class dictionaryOtherwise, the purchaser will be in dano-er of spending his money twice over fiist for the technical dictionary,

and then for the language dictionaiy. of which it is a department. * + * This necessitates the further lcqmsata that the largo general dictionan should, in uts explanations of scientific and technical teims, be fully up to the standard of the special one, otheiuise its public will not, aftei all, be independent of tine latter. It is further manifest that other things- being equal, this object will be best attained bv the dictionary undertaken on the boldest and most comprehensive scale. With tlie sole exception of the orreat Oxford Dictionary, to be completed ten yeaas henoe, tho epithets "bold" and "comprehensive" hardly apply to any similar undertaking except The Century Dictionary & Cyclopaedia & Atlas, and, in this particular department of scientific and practical terms, conveying the information which would formerly have been thought more suitable for an encyclopaedia, it need fear no competition from any quarter. * * * "The Times" offers a work of 10,000 pages, with 500,000 definitions 200,000 geographical and 150,000 encyclopedic articles, and 8000 illustrations, for a preliminary payment of 10s.