COMPLETE AND UP-TO-DATE

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 831, 4 March 1903, Page 3

COMPLETE AND UP-TO-DATE

Thero are ten times as many scionces and ton times as many arts and trades as wero known two years ago, each equipped with a vocabulary of its own. A special dictionary to each of these, though useful to him who follows one scionce or trade exclusively, would involve a small library for the general reader. For his purpose it is necessary to digost them into a single volume; and then, as they are almost all words with which tho ordinary dictionary cannot dispense, it seems tho simplest plan to dispense with the technical dictionary altogether, and come at first where you must como at last, i.o.—to tho really first-rate dictionary. Otherwise, tho purchaser will bo in daugor of spending his money twico over, first for the technical dictionary and then for the language dictionary, of which it is a department. This necessitates tho furthor requisite that the largo general dictionary should, in its explanations of scientific and technical torms, bo fully up to tho standard of the special ono ; otherwise its public will not, after all, be independent of the latter. It is furthor manifest that, other things being equal, this object will bo best attained by tho dictionary undertaken on the boldest and most comprohensivo scale. With tho solo exeeptiou of tho great Oxford Dictionary, to be completed ten years hence, the epitbots “ bold ” and “ comprohensivo” hardly apply to any similar undertaking oxcept Tub Century Dictionary & Cyolop.ewa & Atlas, and, in

in this particular department of scientific and practical terms, conveying the information which would formerly have been thought more suitable for an encyclopedia, it need fear no competition from any quarter. The "Times” offers a work of 10,000 pages, with 500,000 definitions, 200,000 geoprapbical and 150,000 onyclopiedic articles, and 8,000 illustrations, for a preliminary payment of 10s.