170 A HISTORY OF 



CHAPTER X 



THE LIBRARY ; AND THE STATISTICAL SURVEYS 

 OF COUNTIES 



ONE of the rules for the government of the Society, 

 approved in December 1731, laid down that all the 

 works, journals, and transactions which should be 

 published by other Societies and by private persons, and 

 which might contain any useful improvement or dis- 

 covery in nature or art, were to be purchased. Thus, 

 at the earliest possible period, was the formation of a 

 Library provided for, and this rule governed the 

 purchase of books for more than a century. 



The earliest catalogue of the library was very 

 technically drawn up about 1735-6. The books 

 included in it were in English, French, Greek, German, 

 Low Dutch, La tin, and Spanish, and treat of Agriculture, 

 Arithmetic, Bridges, Civil Law, Flax, Farm Build- 

 ings, Hemp, Husbandry, Hydraulics, Hydrotechnics, 

 Machinery, Metallurgy, Mills, Police, Rural Economy, 

 Statistics, and Silk Worms. (Preface to catalogue, 

 suppl. 1850, by Edward R. P. Colles, librarian.) The 

 library, then comprising thirty-seven volumes, increased 

 during the ensuing sixty years to 2105, and the follow- 

 ing are the titles of the books as they appeared in the 

 original catalogue : 



Folios. * 



Theatrum Machinarum Generale, by Leopold [Leupold], 

 in High Dutch. Leipzig, 1724. 



