136 The Library. to so many different people, specially so to those charged with the administration of large libraries, has long ago ceased, so far as the changeable and changing part of it is concerned, to be of much practical utility. Is it not, therefore, natural to hope, to wish, that soon we may hear that the publication of another new statistical account is in contemplation ? There should be no difficulty in finding the willing and competent editor the difficulty might lie in there being too many of them and the well-known commercial enterprise of the class would quickly produce the publisher. That there is abundance of material for such a work needs no pointing out to a meeting of librarians. Could you imagine how a set of blue books such as are now yearly issued by Parliament would have delighted the soul of Sir John Sinclair 100 years ago, how he would have revelled in the reports of crown commissioners, parliamentary committees, board of trade, fishery commissioners, board of agriculture and of manufactures, in census, railway and other such like reports. And consider the immense number of private works bearing on the topography, biography, antiquities and general condition of Scotland which have issued from the press during the last 50 years, works containing abundance of varied and accurate in- formation regarding this country, and touching upon almost every corner of it, and only waiting to be again brought together, digested, arranged and issued anew in some such form as the Statistical Accounts of the past. JAMES T. CLARK.
