made a brief statement, that the committee as a whole had been unable this year to visit and report upon the schools. He presented, as the report of the committee, a letter from Dr. E. C. Richardson, one of its members who had visited several of the schools as lecturer.[D] WILLIAM BEER spoke briefly on COLLECTION AND CATALOGING OF EARLY NEWSPAPERS. The few remarks I have to make on this subject are prompted by a recent effort to collect from printed catalogs the scattered newspaper material for the first 15 years of the 19th century. The collection of information on the locality of files of newspapers up to 1800 has been commenced, and will in time be completed by Mr. Nelson, who publishes his results in the "Archives of the State of New Jersey." Many corrections will be necessary to his list, but it will even in its present shape be of great advantage to historical students. The difficulty of the work increases almost in geometrical proportion as the dates approach the present era. The great increase of newspapers renders it necessary to divide the work into decades. I have chosen to carry it to 1815 on account of the importance to Louisiana history of the reports on the battle of New Orleans. The particular feature in cataloging which I would fain see carried out in every library is the chronological conspectus, of which so admirable an example exists in Bolton's catalog of scientific documents, which is, or ought to be, familiar to all present. It is exceedingly simple and easy to prepare and is of the greatest possible service, both to the librarian and the student. Take any folio book ruled in wide columns with an ample margin. For my purpose I start by heading the first column 1800, and so on to the end of the page. Taking material from Mr. Galbreath's useful compilation, I find that in the libraries of Ohio there is only one title which will appear under this head, the _Western Spy_ in the collection of the Cincinnati Young Men's Mercantile Library. Enter in the marginal column the full details of the publication of this newspaper and draw a horizontal line across the column. The years 1802-3-4, etc., present an increasing number of titles. The horizontal lines in the columns present an immediate summary of all the newspaper literature on the subject. Dr. G. E. WIRE read a paper on SOME PRINCIPLES OF BOOK AND PICTURE SELECTION. (_See_ p. 54.)