preceding edition, the whole field has been re-surveyed with the guidance of the most eminent specialists. The editors early decided that the new edition should be planned and written as a whole, and refused to content themselves with the old-fashioned plan of regarding each volume as a separate unit, to be compiled and published by itself. They were thus able to arrange their material so as to give an organic unity to the whole work and to place all the various subjects under their natural headings, in the form which experience has shown to be the most convenient for a work of universal reference. An important consequence of this method of editing is that the twenty-eight volumes are now ready for publication at the same time, and that the complete work can be offered to the public in its entirety. Although the work has been reduced to the smallest compass consistent with lucidity—bibliographies of all subjects which call for assistance of this nature being provided in aid of more detailed study—the aim throughout has been to maintain the highest standard of scholarly authority, and to provide a thorough elucidation of important scientific problems for which the modern inquirer as no adequate text-books. This Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is now, therefore, offered to the public by the University of Cambridge in the hope and belief that it will be found to be a trustworthy guide to sound learning, and an instrument of culture of world-wide influence.
- Cambridge
- November 1, 1910.
