The Smithsonian Library 289 



lishment. This collection was a most valuable complement 

 to the library already gathered at the Capitol. . . . With this 

 large addition (numbering nearly 40,000 volumes) 'the Library 

 of Congress became at once the most extensive and valu- 

 able repository of material for the wants of scholars which 

 was to be found in the United States. By the terms of trans- 

 fer of the Smithsonian library, Congress became its custodian 

 during such time as the Regents of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion should continue the deposit, it being stipulated that the 

 expense of binding and cataloguing of all books should be de- 

 frayed by Congress in return for this valuable and annually 

 increasing addition to its stores. This arrangement, while it 

 relieves the funds of the Smithsonian Institution from an an- 

 nual charge in maintaining a library, secures to the National 

 Library an invaluable scientific department without material 

 cost ; and the deposit, supplying as it does a much larger 

 library of use and reference to the scholars of the country than 

 is to be found in any one body elsewhere, is likely to be a 

 permanent one." * 



" The union of the library of the Institution with that of 

 Congress still continues to be productive of important results. 

 The Smithson fund is relieved by this arrangement from 

 the maintenance of a separate library, while at the same time 

 the Institution has not only the free use of its own books, but 

 also those of the Library of Congress. On the other hand, 

 the collection of books owned by Congress would not be 

 worthy the name of a national library were it not for the 

 Smithsonian deposit. The books which it receives from this 

 source are eminently those which exhibit the progress of the 

 world in civilization, and are emphatically those essential to 

 the contemporaneous advance of our country in the higher 

 science of the day." : 



The books were actually transferred in 1866, and Doctor 

 Theodore Gill, who had been for some time the librarian of 



1 " Public Libraries in the United States," Washington, 1876, page 256. 

 2 " Smithsonian Report," 1873, page 27. 



