40 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



spirit of liberality as gratifying as it is beneficial. It is believed that 

 an amount of at least $1,500 has been saved by these free freights dur- 

 ing the year, a sum which in effect may be considered as having been 

 added to the income of the Institution, and thereby correspondingly 

 increasing its means of usefulness. Acknowledgments are due to a 

 number of persons in the United States who have assisted without 

 charge in distributing the volumes of Smithsonian Contributions, viz: 

 Hickling, Swan & Brewer, of Boston; D. Appleton & Co., New York; 

 J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia; Russell & Jones, Charleston; 

 Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati; and Bloomfield, Steele & Co., in New 

 Orleans. Messrs. J. W. Raymond and Mr. W. H. Wickham, of New 

 York, and Mr. A. B. Forbes, of San Francisco, agents of the California 

 lines referred to above, have rendered services of a similar character. 

 It is gratifying to be able to repeat the statement made in previous 

 reports, that all Smithsonian packages are allowed to pass free of 

 duty and without examination at the custom-houses of all the civil- 

 ized countries with which the Institution is in correspondence. 



Library. — During the past year the plan adopted in regard to the 

 increase of the library has been constantly kept in view, namely, to 

 procure as perfect and extensive a series as possible of the transac- 

 tions and proceedings of all the learned societies which now exist or 

 have existed in different parts of the world. The library, in this- 

 respect, is now perhaps the first in the United States, and has in- 

 creased, since the date of the last Report, not only by the addition of 

 the current publications but by a number of new series and of volumes 

 to complete sets hitherto imperfect. 



The catalogue of the serial publications of foreign learned societies, 

 State governments, universities, public libraries, and private parties r 

 contained in the library, mentioned in the last report, has been pub- 

 lished. It forms a book of 259 octavo pages and includes all the 

 collections of the kind above mentioned, down to the middle of the 

 year 1859. Copies of this have been sent to all the foreign societies, 

 with a request that deficient series of volumes or parts of volumes 

 be supplied, and that any works of the same kind which are not to 

 be found in the catalogue be furnished from duplicates at the disposal 

 of any of the establishments with which the Institution is in cor- 

 respondence. 



The distribution of this catalogue to the principal institutions of 

 this country and abroad will not only facilitate the completion of the; 



