Though there has been no sustained or organized effort on the part of the State, or of any community in the State, to recognize the duty of collecting and preserving the priceless records of its historical growth, yet, by the luck that often attends improvidence, we have the nucleus of a library which goes far toward offsetting our culpable indifference. One of the great fires that swept San Francisco in its early stages just missed the Bancroft Library, then at the corner of Merchant and Montgomery streets. The later fire that burned the building on Market Street, near Third, next door to the History Building, again barely missed the Bancroft Library. And when it was moved to the building especially constructed for it at Valencia and Mission streets, the great conflagration of the 18th of April, 1906, just failed to reach it. In this State it had remained for a private individual, by his life work, to collect and preserve a library that to the State of California is almost priceless in value. This magnificent library the State of California has recently purchased and installed in the California Building, at the State University, where its usefulness is being developed by the Academy of Pacific Coast History, an association organized in connection with the history work of the University. By a series of happy accidents, then, we are in a position to start with as great a nucleus of its historical data as any commonwealth ever had. There remains the great work of cataloguing and publishing, rendering available to the investigation of scholarship this mass of original data, and the State should immediately provide the liberal fund necessary for the mechanical and clerical administrative work.