COMPLETE AND UP-TO-DATE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12599, 28 February 1903, Page 11

COMPLETE AND UP-TO-DATE.

There axe ten times as many sciences and ten times 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 of these, though useful to him who follows ono science or trade exolusively, would involve a small library for the general reader. For his purpose it 13 necessary to digest them into a single volumo; and then, as they are almost all words with which the ordinary dictionary cannot dispense, it scorns the simplest plan to dispense with the technical dictionary altogether, and como at first where you must como at lasfc—i.e., to (he really first-rate dictionary. Otherwise the purchaser will be in danger of spending his money twice over, first for the technical dictionary and then for tho language dictionary, of which it- is a department. This necessitates the further recruirite that the large general dictionary should, in its explanations of scientific and technical terms, be fully up to the standard of the special one; otherwise its public will not, after all, be independent of the latter. It is further manifest that, other things being equal, this object will be best attained by the dictionary undertaken on the boldest and most comprehensive scale. With the sole exception of the- great Oxford Dictionary, to bo completed ten years hence, the epithets " bold " and " comprehensive " hardly apply to amy similar undertaking except THE CENTURY DICTIONARY & CYCLOPEDIA & ATLAS, and, in this particular department of sciontifio and practical terms, convoying tho information which would formerly have been thought moro suitable for am enoyoloptedia, it need fear no competition from any quarter. Tho Times offers a work of 10,000 pages, with _ 500,000 definitions, 200,000 geographical and 150.000 encyclopffldio articles, and 8000 illustrations, for a preliminary payment of 10s. '