14 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
throughout Massachusetts. In 1890, when the Free Public Libraries 
Commission was established, there were 248 out of the 341 towns in 
the commonwealth, that enjoyed such privileges. In 1899 there were 
only seven towns that were still without a free library, and these com- 
prised less than one-half of one per cent of the population. I have 
not the figures of the past year before me, but think it very probable 
that even some of the benighted seven have ere this joined the 
enlightened majority by establishing public libraries in their midst. 
In the free libraries of Massachusetts there were, in 1899, some 
8,750,000 volumes, with an annual circulation of 7,666,666, or over 
three volumes to every inhabitant. The amount given for libraries 
and library buildings in Massachusetts in the shape of gifts and 
bequests, reaches in money alone the sum of over $8,000,000. 
In an exhaustive and very valuable monograph upon “ Public 
Libraries and Popular Education,” by Herbert B. Adams, Ph.D., 
LL.D., Professor of American and institutional history in Johns 
Hopkins University, the following list is given, admirably illustrating 
the evolution of the American library. Dr. Adams calls it a “ select 
list of original library types ”:— 
1. The private libraries of early colonists. 
2. The institutional or scholastic libraries of Harvard, Yale, William & 
Mary colleges, etc. 
3. The church or parish libraries instituted in North Carolina, Maryland, 
and the South by Dr. Bray, founder and Secretary of the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel. 
4. The co-operative or joint-stock library, e.g., the Philadelphia Library 
Company, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731, which antedates by 25 
years the first subscription library in England (Liverpool, 1756).? 
5. The first theological library in America was that of St. Mary’s theo- 
logical seminary of St. Sulpice, Baltimore, 1791. 
6. The first law library was that of the Bar Association of Philadelphia, 
1802. 
7. The first medical library was at Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, 
1763. 
8 The first scientific libraries were those of the American Philosophical 
Society, Philadelphia, 1743; and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 
Boston, 1780. 
9. The first State Historical Society library was that of Massachusetts, 
founded at Boston, 1791. 
10. The first foreign nationality to establish a library was the German 
Society of Philadelphia, 1764. 
11. The first town library was in Salisbury, Ct., 1803, or at Peterborough, 
N.H., 1833. 

* This is incorrect. A subscription library was established in Edinburgh 
as early as 1725, and in London in 1740. The Liverpool (Lyceum) Library 
was founded in 1758, not 1756. 
