12 



©on. It&rarian's Hrpoqt 



for 1910-11. 



1am very glad to report that our library has steadily grown 

 during the year. Most welcome donations have been received 

 from Dr. Ransome, of several volumes ; from Dr. Ord, of a 

 work on local geology, he being the author ; and Dr. Crallan has 

 added still further to his remarkable generosity in starting our 

 library. 



Other kind donors are Miss Rooper, Mr. R. V. Sherring, 

 several volumes ; Mr. J. M. French, five books ; whilst Messrs. 

 Arthur Whitehead, H. Le Jeune, Geo. Ricks, and R. P. Yates are 

 all contributors. To the Rev. C. Robertson Honey, the author, 

 we are indebted for a work on the Egyptian Hieroglyph, which is 

 unique in character, and as only fifty copies of it are published, no 

 doubt it is of considerable value. 



May I be allowed to suggest that a very little help of a similar 

 kind from several friends would make our library more thoroughly 

 representative and of still greater value to our Society. May I also 

 hint that perhaps our little library is worthy of somewhat more 

 attention than it has yet received. 



The usual interchange of annual reports and proceedings has 

 been made between this Society and kindred ones, and these records 

 may be recommended as of great interest to our members. 



Especially is this so in the case of the Chester Society of 

 Natural Science, which has attached to their usual report a short 

 history of their Society, from its foundation, by no less a personage 

 than the late Charles Kingsley, to the present time. To all those — 

 and surely they are many — to whom this great name is an inspiring 

 memory, I beg to commend this little sketch as of great biographical 

 interest ; also it is pregnant with example and suggestion to all 

 Societies like our own. 



Many will no doubt have seen an account of the opening by 

 Lord Rosebery, in his own inimitable way, of the Mitchell Library 

 at Glasgow, when with a courage all his own he confessed to no 

 small depression in the presence of some 180,000 volumes — mostly 

 dead. An enormous cemetery of books, as he put it. Others of 

 the books, he suggested, were but half alive, so that he feared the 

 truly live ones were comparatively few in number. 



Now I think I may at least relieve the minds of any 

 intending visitors to our very modest nucleus of a library from any 

 apprehension of this kind in regard to it. For practically all our 

 books are more or less scientific in character, and science, as a rule, 

 neglecting theory, marches by sure, well-tested steps to impregnable 

 conclusions. So that the books upon our shelves are not dead, but 

 are a record, and a living record, of accumulated fact. They are 

 part and parcel ol that magnificent and continually more successful 

 effort of modern science to solve the riddles of that marvellous 

 universe in which we live, and to solve them to the ever increasing 

 benefit of all mankind. 



