There is a still more barbarous method, whichneed not receive more than passing mention. Thisis simply to register documents in the memorywithout taking written notes. This method hasbeen used. Historians endowed with excellentmemories, and lazy to boot, have indulged thiswhim, with the result that their quotations andreferences are mostly inexact. The human memoryis a delicate piece of registering apparatus, but it isso little an instrument of precision that such pre-sumption is inexcusable.