The reading room is under the dome, which is 100 feet in diameter and 195 feet high to the lantern. In the lantern of the dome is a female figure indicating Human Understanding, and on the collar surrounding the lantern, 150 feet in circumference, is the Evolution of Civilization, symbolic of the 12 nations and epochs which have contributed to the world’s advance--both great works of art by Edwin Howland Blashfield. The dome is beautifully decorated, and the series of statues in bronze by famous American sculptors at intervals on the balustrade encircling the rotunda make the scene impressive. The pillars in the rotunda are 40 feet high, the windows 32 feet wide. There are 16 bronze statues surrounding the railing of the gallery under the dome, representing leaders in great fields of learning, as follows: _Religion_: Moses the great lawgiver, holding the Tables of the Law, given at Mount Sinai, by Charles Henry Niehaus; St. Paul, with sword and scroll, by John Donoghue. _Commerce_: Christopher Columbus, by Paul Bartlett; Robert Fulton, holding a model of his first steamboat, Clermont, by Lewis Potter. _History_: Herodotus, the “Father of History,” by Daniel Chester French; Edward Gibbon, author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by C. H. Niehaus. _Art_: Michelangelo, by Paul Bartlett; Beethoven, by Theodor Bauer. _Philosophy_: Plato, by John J. Boyle; Francis Bacon, by John J. Boyle. _Poetry_: Homer, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens; Shakespeare, by Frederick W. MacMonnies. _Law_: Solon, by F. Wellington Ruckstuhl; James Kent, by George E. Bissell. _Science_: Newton, by Cyrus E. Dallin; Joseph Henry, by Herbert Adams. Numerous paintings, mosaics, and inscriptions adorn the interior walls. The dark Tennessee, the red Numidia, and the shades of yellow Sienna marble give the room a rich color effect. When the collection of a million books was moved from the crowded Capitol it was believed that the increase for the next hundred years had been amply provided for; but before 15 years had passed it had been found necessary to roof over one of the four great open courts (more than a quarter of an acre in extent) and fill it with a 10-story steel bookstack to hold 1,500,000 volumes. By 1927 another court had been filled with a 14-story stack. Two years later four levels were added to the first of these court stacks, making the two equal. To meet the great increase in the future, Congress appropriated for the purchase of a square and a half of land to the eastward and the construction of an annex building costing $9,300,000. To the annex will be transferred the copyright office, card division, printery, and bindery, but leaving room in it for eight or ten million volumes of less active material, such, for example, as the 97,000 volumes of bound newspapers. There are 20 acres of floor space in the new building.