Miscellaneous Papers. 323 



collection of a library was not a prominent object in the thought 

 of its founders. As by incorporation it was regarded as a depart- 

 ment of the State Board of Agriculture, so in its earlier years its 

 Transactions were published as appendices to the biennial report 

 of that board. After a few years it became a matter of mutual 

 convenience to have the Transactions published in separate vol- 

 umes, and so it has continued to the twenty-third volume, which 

 is now in the hands of the printer. These volumes are regarded as 

 valuable contributions to scientific inquiry, and contain the best 

 papers of our scientific men. They have been received as accept- 

 able exchanges by large numbers of scientific journals and publi- 

 cations, both domestic and foreign, and such exchanges have been 

 carried on till now the Academy has a library of more than 6000 

 volumes, Many of these are in foreign languages, and come from 

 every country where scientific contributions are published. The 

 earlier editions of the first seven volumes having been exhausted, 

 the Academy, using the funds which had accumulated from mem- 

 bership dues, had 500 copies of these volumes reprinted, so that 

 now fifty or more complete sets of the Transactions can be sold or 

 used in exchanges. This will be a valuable asset in the future de- 

 velopment of the library. Not much has been done in cataloguing 

 this library beyond a card index which shows the titles of volumes 

 on hand and the sources from which they come. The Academy 

 has received from the various government departments at Wash- 

 ington their scientific publications, and many of the sets are near 

 enough complete to be of great value. 



The removal of the library and collections of the Academy from 

 the basement to the fourth floor of the statehouse, and the subse- 

 quent clearing of a room where our books were stored, have been 

 great obstacles to getting the library into a usable condition, and 

 now there is little encouragement to make permanent arrange- 

 ments, when in a year or two there will be another removal to the 

 new Memoral building. 



Most of the exchanges coming in pamphlet form, it has been a 

 great advantage to the Academy to have the state printer do the 

 binding, as it does for the state library and for the Historical 

 Society. Each of these organizations working separately and in- 

 dependently in the matter of exchanges naturally brings to the 

 statehouse collections many duplicate and triplicate copies of the 

 same scientific publications. This is especially true of the publi- 

 cations received from Washington. When these are bound by the 

 state there is also considerable expense which might be saved, since 



