These form a collection of 121 volumes. To the University of Copenhagen as well as to numerous others of the learned Societies and Libraries of Europe, the Trustees owe their thanks for help cordially given to this Library. From the United States of America contributions have reached the Library, highly prized as yielding information on the progress of mining, the conduct of agriculture, and other topics. The assistance afforded by the British Government has admitted of the expansion of certain branches of civil history, polity, and political science, the deficient condition of which in the Library had been felt by the public. The Lords of the Treasury, obligingly moved by Mr. Peel, gave their sanction to an application addressed to them; and the War-office, the Board of Ordnance, and the Admiralty, furnished an extensive supply of military and naval history, surveys, maps, and charts, with which branches of information the Library had been till then imperfectly provided. The Commissioners of Patents have given the whole of their specifications published since the reign of King James I. These publications are of incalculable value in a country where, as in this, it is so necessary to economise labour, and where inventive genius, ever active, requires to be instructed as to the failure of misdirected energy and the limits of discovery already reached; they are brought down, bound, to the end of the year 1871, and with the indexes and journals already reach 3861 volumes. The plans are all placed at the end of the letterpress, and open out clear beyond the volume, so as to enable the reader to peruse the specification and examine the plan without interruption; they are strained on strong linen, well let in to the backs of the books. More than 45,000 yards of this material have been employed by the binders. The country already possesses two complete sets of this work; one lies in the library of the Houses of Parliament, neither arranged nor bound, and accessible only to those who enjoy the exclusive privilege of membership; the other in the office of Patents, for the use of the officers of that department. Thus the community at large derive comparatively little benefit primarily from the liberality of the Commissioners. In this Library, brought down to so late a date, the Public in general have opportunities of unrestricted consultation of the whole series, and such publicity is given to the results of speculative invention in the mother country, as to preclude the possibility of successful plagiarism or piracy of the protected ideas of others. The Boards of Trade and of Education gave a comprehensive series of their publications. The Trustees of the British Museum all the books issued by their authority, together with a facsimile of the Old Testament from the Alexandrine Codex, 6 volumes folio-a noble present, suggested by the courteous attention of the librarian, Mr. Panizzi. a 2 |