results of some important expedition, like that of the Challenger, for example, and not printing enough copies to meet even the hungry demand of her own special students. We have never erred in this respect, and in the scathing comments which this particular English frugality has received from her own men, our country has invariably been held up in striking contrast as an example to imitate. With the liberality of the General Government in this respect it is a pity that the distribution of printed matter should not be better systematized. There are many documents that doubtless represent official reports which are circulated not so much for instruction as to inform the country just what has been done by certain bureaus, and these probably reach the proper parties, in being sent to those prominent in governmental and political matters. With these we are not concerned. There are many other publications, however, that are issued solely for the purposes of information and instruction in lines of thought in which there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students in the United States. It is obvious that if these kinds of documents are issued to advance learning, then such copies, as are freely distributed through the mails should go to those who most need them. The present distribution of many of them is so imperfect that it would be paralleled by the Pension Bureau issuing a certain number of money checks to congressmen and senators to scatter where they pleased, or to realize on them if they were so inclined. Let me make this clearer. So far as I have been able to ascertain, the regular edition of a public document is nineteen hundred. From this edition fifty foreign governments, and the larger libraries and institutions in this country are each supposed to receive a copy. Each senator and congressman is entitled to two copies, and probably more for the asking. It is a common belief that many of these men dump their public documents into the waste-paper barrel, for the janitor to realize upon as old paper, which at one time had some value. As a matter of fact, many of them are sold to the junk shops, where they find their way into the secondhand book stalls; and students who want them are grateful for even this opportunity of securing them by purchase. It would certainly seem that a report which is of special interest to a greater or less number of students and writers should in some way get to them, and that their names should be on some permanent list at headquarters, so that when any report in their special line of thought is published they should be among the first to receive it. Not only is it evident that the Government publications often fall into the wrong hands, but, worse still, hundreds of thousands of volumes are rotting in the cellars of the Capitol and vitiating the air by their decomposition. A committee recently appointed by the
