Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/479

Rh House, to look into the question of fresh air has just discovered that certain rooms in the basement of the Capitol are filled with Government publications. In one series of vaults were one million two hundred and fifty thousand volumes, and many of these have been stored for thirty years. "They present a vast bulk of decomposing vegetable matter, which is constaintlyconstantly [sic] tainting the atmosphere with impurities."

One reason of the apathy of the people in regard to the waste of public documents is that being free they are supposed to be valueless, and to many who receive them they have no value. In the rural regions they are used as scrap-books by the children, and there is hardly an attic in the land that does not contain a few of this kind of books, mixed with the usual light truck which ascends to the garret.

There is certainly nothing to complain of in the scientific departments of the Government. The valuable contributions published by the various scientific bureaus, have been distributed in such a way that special students get, without much trouble, the works needed in their studies. So far as I know, but few if any of these drift into the wrong channels. There are special reports of an ethnological character now and then appearing in other departments, notably in the United States consular reports, and subjects pertaining to other sciences issued from other bureaus, and these would be priceless to certain special workers, yet such reports are usually exhausted when application is made for them. I have often secured Government publications of the greatest value by overhauling a lot of stuff which some lawyer was about to throw away. Reports that I had never heard the existence of have come to me in this manner. Lately I had given to me from an editor's room several shelffuls [sic] of pamphlets, books, etc., which were on their way to destruction. Among these were many public documents on various subjects, and these were distributed to those whom I knew would make good use of them. Among the letters of acknowledgment was one from a gentleman who has made a special study of the seal-fisheries dispute, and has written a number of reviews on the subject. This letter came in return for a government report containing a lengthy legal opinion about the seal fisheries, and is as follows: "Ever so much obliged to you for the document. I devoured it right off, and then took it up to the Harvard Law Library, where they were no less pleased to get it. They had never seen it nor heard of it, and seemed to be amused at the idea of their obtaining it through two such outside barbarians in law matters as you and I." This is by no means an exceptional case.

A public library of nearly forty thousand volumes in a neighboring city finds it impossible to get anywhere near a complete