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For thirty years or so the Middlesex County Council, through its Public Control Department, has persistently tried to protect purchasers of fish from malpractices in the retail fish trade. It would be incorrect to suggest that no other Food and Drugs Authority has tried to do the same, but it is evident that in many areas there has been little or no overt sign of similar activity. Recently there was a Middlesex prosecution in which the owners of a restaurant were fined £2, with £4 costs, for supplying fried dabs described on the menu as plaice. This aroused the ire of a Mr. Ralph A. Hadrill, who wrote to The Times a letter severely criticising the Council. To that letter pride of place on the leader page was given by the Editor of The Times. Two days later, four further letters were printed on this intriguing subject. One writer expressed the view that some purchasers prefer dabs to plaice in the spring. The Chairman of the Middlesex General Purposes Committee strongly criticised Mr. Hadrill, and emphatically denied that his Council was wasting the ratepayers' money. On the contrary, he claimed that the Council provides purchasers of fish with very necessary protection at a most economical cost.

It is now forty years since there appeared H. R. Plomer's first volume Dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. This has been followed by additional Bibliographical Society publications covering similarly the years up to 1775. From the short sketches given in this series, indicating changes of imprint and type of work undertaken, scholars working with English books issued before the closing years of the eighteenth century have had great assistance in dating the undated and in determining the colour and calibre of any work before it is consulted.

Since the late eighteenth century, American men have supported women's equality. (see Kimmel and Mosmiller, 1992). Even before the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York heralded the birth of the organized women's movement in 1848, American men had begun to argue in favor of women's rights. That celebrated radical, Thomas Paine, for example, mused in 1775 that any formal declaration of independence from England should include women, since women have, as he put it, “an equal right to virtue.”(Paine, [1775] 1992, 63–66). Other reformers, like Benjamin Rush and John Neal articulated claims for women's entry into schools and public life. Charles Brockden Brown, America's first professional novelist, penned a passionate plea for women's equality in Alcuin(1798).

The following is a partial abstract, with acknowledgments, of the latest report issued by the Ministry of Health. “This Report,” it is said, “should be of service to public analysts, analytical chemists and all those concerned with the determination of lead in food.” The condensed and valuable review describing methods for the determination of lead in foods, and a general method for the determination of small amounts of lead in food can hardly be abstracted, and we must refer readers to the report itself for the necessary details.

A little knowledge may or may not be a dangerous thing; complete ignorance can be fatal.

THE Hastings Conference of the Library Association has come and gone, and the battle fought during the Annual General Meeting was in full keeping with the town's historical tradition. But whereas the defeat of Harold in 1066 led to a long era of stability in English history, the results of the A.G.M. vote last month will cause chaos and uncertainty in the immediate future of the Library Association. After protracted debate the Council's proposals for reorganisation went to the vote and gained a majority of very nearly 4 to 1. But just before the ballot it transpired that, at the request of the Privy Council, to which body the bye‐law alterations must be sent for approval, the votes of institutional delegates had to be counted separately from those of personal members. At the count, over 500 personal members voted for, with 35 against, but the institutional delegate vote was 135 for, with 141 against. So, for the present, all is uncertainty, and librarians everywhere will now await the Privy Council's decision with more than usual interest and impatience.