60 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



The disparity indicated by the foregoing statistics between the 

 number of packages sent and those received in behalf of the Govern- 

 ment is accounted for, in part, by the fact that packages sent abroad 

 contain, as a rule, only one publication, while those received in re- 

 turn often comprise many volumes, in some instances, especially in 

 the case of publications received in return for parliamentary docu- 

 ments, the term " package " being applied to large boxes containing 

 100 or more separate publications, of wdiich no lists are made in 

 Washington, as the boxes are forwarded to their destinations un- 

 opened. Furthermore, many returns for publications sent abroad 

 reach their destinations direct by mail and not through the Exchange 

 Service. 



Proper allowance being made for these circumstances, it is, never- 

 theless, apparently true that the publications of the United States 

 Government sent to foreign countries greatly exceed in number those 

 received by the Library of Congress and the several executive de- 

 partments, bureaus, and independent offices. This in turn appears 

 to be due mainly to the fact that most foreigii Governments publish 

 less extensively on scientific and other subjects than our own^ The 

 fiscal relations between the Government and scientific and other in- 

 stitutions are more complex in many countries than is the case in the 

 United States, and the distinction between public documents and 

 other publications is not so clear, especially where the printing .for 

 the Government is not centralized in one office or is not done by the 

 Government itself. 



A^Hiile several of the departments and bureaus of our own Govern- 

 ment have expressed themselves satisfied with the returns received 

 through the Exchange Service, it is proposed to make a further in- 

 vestigation of this subject for the purpose of ascertaming whether 

 some important publications and series of publications have not been 

 overlooked, and also what proportion the number of the publications 

 issued by certain European Governments in a given year bears to 

 the number received by the departments and bureaus of the United 

 States Government, and to the number sent to the former. It will 

 be obvious that a debit and credit account is out of the question in a 

 ease of this kind. While a scientific or literary institution issues 

 publications for the benefit of the whole world, a Government issues 

 reports and other documents mainly for purposes of record and for 

 the information of its own officers and its own citizens. The more 

 largely the people are directly concerned in the Government, and the 

 more extended its interests and activities, the greater will be the out- 

 put of reports and other publications. Such a Government will have 

 much more to oifer than it can expect to receive in return from a 

 smaller country. 



As regards the exchange of miscellaneous scientific and literary 

 publications, it will be noted that the weight in pounds of those 



