AS knowledge increases and books and magazines gather in number, the need for many indexes becomes daily more evident. We often are certain that something has been written on a subject in which we are interested, but in vain we seek for a clue to it. We want a key to all this ever-increasing literature.

As long ago as 1842 the late Thomas Watts, of the British Museum, one of the most learned and all-knowing of librarians, spoke to the late Dr. Greenhill of Hastings on the need for the formation of an Index Society. This date I give on the authority of Dr. Greenhill. Mr. Watts was a perfect index in himself, and few inquirers sought information from him which his fully stored mind was not able to supply; and he was not jealous of the printed index, as some authorities are. Twelve years after—in 1854—an announcement was made in Notes and Queries of the projected formation of a “Society for the Formation of a General Literary Index.”