LII THE ROYAL SOCIETY, OF CANADA 
While up to 1913 British Columbia had no provincial library 
act, it had a Library Association which sought to promote in the 
Legislative Assembly legislation similar to the Ontario Library 
Act. There are public libraries at Victoria, Vancouver, New West- 
minster, Nelson, Kelowna and Vernon. British Columbia has had 
since 1898 a travelling library system, maintained by the Provincial 
Government especially to meet the needs of agricultural and mining 
communities. I regret that I have been unable to obtain from 
British Columbia, in reply to my letters, further details respecting 
its libraries. 
In making this somewhat hurried review of the libraries and the 
library systems of the Dominion one cannot but be impressed by the 
really admirable way in which the public library has been developed 
in Ontario; and, with its Library Association, its Library Institutes, 
its official inspection, its plan of legislative and municipal grants, 
its 409 public libraries, and its other characteristics of organization, 
by the way in which it has come to be clearly recognized as an integral 
part of the educational system of the Province. There is something 
very fine in the thought that in the Free Public Library the poorest 
man in the community has opportunities for intellectual gratification 
or indulgence which could not be added to by the possession of wealth. 
In a democracy such as we have in our Empire we should constantly 
struggle to make the higher forms of pleasure possible for all. 
No one will find fault with such a socialism. If we accept the Amer- 
ican application of the term graduation to ordinary school-leaving, 
we have in the public library the possibilities of post-graduate study. 
Whatever intellectual interests may have been created at school, 
or may have germinated after leaving school, may be indulged by 
utilizing these stores of literature, science, and art. It is pleasing 
to know that these libraries are being increased in number and are 
being increasingly used; it is pleasing to know that the rising genera- 
tion are using them more than their parents do; and it is pleasing 
to know that the more substantial forms of intellectual interest 
appeal increasingly to the rising generation. 
TECHNICAL EDUCATION AND EDUCATION IN AGRICULTURE 
It is here convenient to lay down a series of propositions which 
everyone will be more or less prepared to admit: 
1. It is desirable that education should be continued after 
leaving school. | 
2. The individual is largely influenced intellectually and edu- 
cated by his occupation, or should be. 
