The Smithsonian Institution 



through lack of legislation placing the necessary documents 

 at the disposal of the Exchange Bureau and making an ap- 

 propriation for the clerical assistance and postage ; nor has 

 this treaty apparently been fully carried out, as yet, by any 

 of the contracting nations. 



The absence of several of the principal nations England, 

 France, Germany, and Russia from the treaty will be 

 noted ; but with these countries, as the result of the informal 

 agreement reached with the Institution under the act of Con- 

 gress of 1867, special exchange relations have been main- 

 tained by the United States, and in France and Russia the 

 governments support official exchange bureaus as part of 

 their administrative service, while between England and Ger- 

 many and the United States special arrangements have been 

 made for the exchange of official documents, though with 

 none of these countries, with perhaps the exception of Eng- 

 land, is there any approach to an official exchange at all 

 equitable to the United States a condition, in part, due to 

 the fact that no country publishes on so liberal a scale as our 

 own. That this may, perhaps, be remedied by personal rep- 

 resentation to the many and scattered publishing offices of 

 foreign governments seems probable from the results secured 

 in 1885, when Mr. George H. Boehmer, as representative of 

 the Library of Congress and of the International Exchange 

 Office, visited many of the principal countries of Europe, and 

 secured a large number of documents for the Library of 

 Congress. 



The Institution now receives fifty sets of all documents 

 issued by the Government Printing Office, and despatches to 

 foreign countries forty-three sets. Each country receives in 

 four instalments an average, annually, of about two hundred 

 and thirty-one volumes, and three hundred and seven pamph- 

 lets, the transmissions being made to the designated gov- 



