During the past decade a most serious shortage in texts and monographs in the many special subdivisions of the general field of ophthalmology has developed in this country. This shortage has now become so severe that it is practically impossible for a young ophthalmologist to obtain an adequate work shelf of reference books. Part of the difficulty is attributable to the habit of dependence acquired long ago on the supply of such texts and monographs from European publishers. There has been no dearth of able and ambitious authors, but American publishers have been reluctant to undertake what was very likely to prove a losing venture. Some 150 new ophthalmologists are born into the profession in this country each year. Since books cannot be produced in editions of less than one to two thousand without excessive cost per copy, even the most successful text cannot be sold out in less than