of the Museum itself, entrusted to a salaried officer on the same footing as any other officer of the Museum, the cost of photographing books, MSS., and other objects in the collection, would sink to comparatively nothing; since the photographic staff being salaried by the State, no element of expenditure would remain except the cost of chemicals. At present the charges which the photographer is compelled to make for his own remuneration prohibit any extensive work of the kind from being undertaken, except by speculative publishers. If all the great libraries of the world possessed similar establishments, they might by mutual exchange assist each other with facsimiles of all manuscripts of national interest and of rare or unique books. The question was fully discussed by the Editor of this series in a paper read before the Library Association Congress at Dublin in 1884. Nothing has been done since, so slow is the march of improvement.
