Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/110

 —or eighty-eight per cent.—of the academical students, and all but 88—or eighty-two per cent. of the scientific students used this collection of books. More than eighty-six per cent., that is, of all the undergraduates drew out to the average amount of 26 volumes each. As to the quality of the books drawn, no record is easily obtainable for this particular year; but the record for a previous year shows that more than two thirds were not books of fiction. Statistics just published for the last year show that the academical sophomores alone drew 4,139 volumes from this library; but the sophomores at Yale are denied all benefit from the New Education. The use of Linonian and Brothers' Library by the undergraduates, however, has been relatively decreasing, on account of the large increase in the use of other collections of books more recently placed at their convenient disposal. Noteworthy among such collections are the loan libraries belonging to some of the departments of instruction,—especially of political science, history, etc. Add to all these items the increasing use, by consultation on the spot and otherwise (of which statistics are not easily attainable), of the main college library, and we have an amount of voluntary literary activity among the Yale undergraduates which certainly need not shrink from comparison with the best results of the Harvard system.