would of being made of any degree of strength, or of being lined or protected in any manner, and of being wholly or partially glazed or unglazed as desired, would be best of all adapted for the custody of objects of art or archæology—"infinite riches in a little room." Yet, even if so, libraries and museums are so frequently under the same management that the subject cannot be deemed inappropriate for a congress of librarians. I will finally mention another method of obtaining increased space for the display of books, MSS., and other exhibited objects. The lower part of ordinary bookcases can be converted into show-cases by placing against them, attached or unattached, light tables with glazed tops, resting on wheels to allow of easy withdrawal when access to the case is required. This would greatly increase the exhibition space in libraries and museums, and might sometimes allow the centre of a fine room to be free from obstruction, and available for lectures and meetings. Applied to ordinary wall cases, it might admit of the display of many objects supposed to be exhibited, but which in reality are not so, being placed too high or too low to be seen. FOOTNOTES: [272:1] Read at the Annual Meeting of the Library Association, Belfast, September 1894. [272:2] A paper by Mr. H. M. Mayhew, of the British Museum, on "A Revolving Extension Press." PREFACE TO BLADES' "ENEMIES OF BOOKS"[283:1] The precept "Love your Enemies" was never intended for the enemies of books, because the enemy of books is not an individual foe, but _hostis humani generis_. The value of books, as of other things, may be superstitiously overrated. We are accustomed to speak of them as if they were in themselves the wisdom, or the knowledge, or the genius, of which they are, in fact, only the receptacles. They are not the honey of the human hive, but only the treasure-cells in which it is stored, and the analogue of the bee is the author. But even in this restricted point of view, their function is so important that to destroy them is a crime of _lèse-humanité_; and it is not known that any one ever enunciated their destruction as a sound principle, unless it were the Caliph Omar. Even he, if the famous _bon-mot_ attributed to him is genuine, was willing to spare one book; and could his life have been prolonged for a century or two, he would have discovered that in reprieving the Koran he had authorised the creation of a very considerable literature. The number of commentaries upon the Koran actually existing is not small; what would it have been had it been necessary to prove that all history, and geography, and astronomy, and everything else that man needed to know, was implicitly taught therein?