OUR CONTRIBUTION. 



The almost total want of reference books in our Garnegie Library de- 

 mands the immediate attention and support of all who desire to see a worthy 

 library for the city. It was this idea that led the Historical Society to 

 make the offer of 2,000 of its best books to the Carnegie Library for the 

 present use of all classes of our citizens. It is to be open as a Reference 

 Library to them all. 



Our Society may have seemed to some to be too insistent ir having 

 their works placed in the Carnegie Library. It will be noticed that they are 

 precisely the class of books — books on Canadian history and exploration — 

 which are the glory of the Toronto Library. 



Among these books soon to be open to the citizens are works on early 

 colonial history, books of early travel on Hudson Bay and the Atlantic 

 coast; valuable works on Indian lore and customs; accounts of early fur 

 traders, as well as most of the Canadian books which have been published 

 in Canada in late years. There, too, is a splendid set of the Jesuit 

 Relations of sixty-nine volumes; Bancroft's great series of the Pacific Coast 

 of 31,000 large pages; Schoolcraft's six quarto volumes on Algonquin 

 folk-lore; Leslie Stephens' remarkable National Biography of sixty-three 

 volumes; Murray's large dictionary up to the letter K, which, when com- 

 plete, is to have one million of new quotations. There are besides large 

 numbers of most valuable works, including the great set from the Smith- 

 sonian institution of 120 volumes of the Geological Survey of the United 

 States, with its splendid illustrations. 



WHAT IS NEEDED? 



No doubt city finances need consideration; but if Toronto added to its 

 Reference Library 2,500 volumes a year in its first ten years, does not 

 Winnipeg need to do the same? Cyclopaedias and gazetteers are wanted. 

 Questions of every sort arise, making it necessary to have full sources ot 

 information. Dictionaries are in great demand for all the twenty or thirty 

 languages spoken in the city; and especially is every variety of dictionary 

 wanted for the English language. Dictionaries of language, etymology, 

 archaic and provaxia words, anachronis . s, bcoUisli w ras ana expressions, 

 Irish-English, Gipsy dialect, synonyms, and the like. Constant disputes are 



