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 unindebted to donations for a portion of its stock : the cult of the donor is to all a necessary object, especially to those with slender budgets, and receiving no legal tribute from publishers and printers. A natural pride of fatherhood will induce an author to make sure that his fellow-ratepayers, the members of his university, or other institution to which he owes allegiance, shall have an opportunity at least of reading his productions, both in his own and later ages. Even if a more or less well-founded confidence persuades him that libraries will, of their own accord, not willingly let his efforts die, it is often a point of honour, with the student at any rate, to make what small return he can for the opportunities afforded him by the libraries that have aided his researches, whether in his own or a foreign country. Hence every large library is continually nurtured by a refreshing rain of gifts from the remotest corners of the globe. Thus the British Museum acquires in this way 5500 articles yearly, the Bodleian 10,000 (including theses). The National Library of Switzerland, started at Berne in 1895, received by gift as many as 23,000 volumes, pamphlets, and broadsides in eight months. Donors should always be rewarded by a prompt receipt, and if authors, by a speedy appearance of their names in the library catalogue, however insignificant the gift. The steady pursuance of this practice at the British Museum, even in the case of books apparently insignificant, is doubtless responsible in no small degree for its varied and valuable acquisitions