really prepared to say that the existing board shall decide such questions; and, if not, is it ready to leave matters so complex and difficult to the judgment of any one man, be he who he may? Lastly, the Librarian is permitted to lend books neither rare nor valuable, and it is left to him alone to decide whether a given book is or is not rare or valuable. To those ignorant of books it will seem easy enough to settle this question, though it is one to frighten a man who does know something about them. Nothing is stranger than the sudden way in which some books become at first scarce, and then totally disappear. For nearly forty years I have been on the look-out for two English books which I read as a child; one a book of voyages and travels, the other a cheap edition of the Arabian Nights, and never once in all that time have I had a chance of buying either: they seem to have vanished. One would have said without hesitation that they were not rare and certainly not valuable, yet they are absolutely unprocurable. But this is a technical matter which will hardly interest Congregation. It is more to the point to insist that the rules for lending drawn up and approved by the Curators should be revised and approved by Convocation, and that without its consent they shall neither be altered nor abrogated. Even so it will be impossible to prevent frightful mischief. If the thoroughly bad principle of lending is affirmed, is it not clear that the Paris rule should be adopted? That rule is that _only duplicates of books neither rare nor valuable_ (the exact words of the regulation are quoted in the ‘Remarks,’ p. 43) _shall be lent_.