Your Royal Highness may have heard of the Board of Agriculture having sent for twelve copies of Miss Edgeworth’s essay on Irish _Bulls_, for the use of that Institution, and this ludicrous mistake was thought so exquisite, that no one would have fancied it could possibly be equalled. But the attempt at cataloguing drawn up by some learned astronomers, the ornament and pride of the Royal Society, proves that among the members of this famous Institution, there are some who could leave the whole Board of Agriculture in the shade. The work on _star-fish_, mistaken for a work on _constellations_, not only is adorned with plates, showing that it treated of _aquatic_ not _heavenly bodies_, but on the very title-page there is an oval engraving representing on the upper half the heavens covered with _stars_, and the lower half, the sea with _star-fish_; with the motto, _sicut superius ita est inferius_, which was taken literally by the acute individual who made this entry, and who very mathematically argued that the stars _below_, must belong to the domain of astronomical science, if they be, as the author declares, like those _above_. On the recto of the following page a dedication of the work occurs to Sir Hans Sloane, as President, and to the Fellows of the Royal Society, which probably was either passed over unread by the modest fellow who catalogued the book; or served to dazzle his understanding with such passages as this: “fulgent sidera in cœlis, in orbe litterario illustris vestra Societas. Sideribus inscribere stellas convenit.” But how could any one doubt that the work was _astronomical_, when the writer provokingly begins his preface: “Cœlorum spectare sidera decet juvatque Astronomos.” It is true he continues: “Physicorum interest stellis marinis visum intendere.” But this was probably taken for a figurative speech; and with that bold decision by which great men are distinguished, this work on so inferior a subject as star-fish, dedicated to the Royal Society, was by the _élite_ of that same body declared to be a treatise on much higher bodies, on _constellations_, and consequently classed among astronomical books, whilst I, thinking _marine_ stars to be animals, did not dare to follow an example so _splendidé mendax_, and classed the work among others on _zoological_ subjects. What a difference, both with respect to the length of the title and the classes in which it was entered! Linckius would rise from his grave, were he to see mis-classed a work, which, as he said, he had dedicated to the resplendent constellations forming the Royal Society of his days, just because it treated of stars! How fortunate that the learned persons who are to render my Catalogue correct and complete have it still in their power to appease his indignant shade by re-classing the work among _astronomical_ treatises!