This fund has received many noble additions since the above, the total, with interest, amounting, up to the end of 1883, to no less than £15,500, of which there is still in hand, £10,000 for the purchase of books. The precaution of insuring such an institution and its contents had of course been taken, and most fortunately the requisite endorsements on the policies had been made to cover the extra risk accruing from the alteration in progress. The insurances were made in the "Lancashire" and "Yorkshire" offices, the buildings for £10,000, the Reference Library for £12,000, the Lending Library for £1,000, the Shakespeare Library for £1,500, the Prince Consort statue for £1,000, the models of Burke and Goldsmith for £100, and the bust of Mr. Timmins for £100, making £25,700 in all. The two companies hardly waited for the claim to be made, but met it in a most generous manner, paying over at once £20,000, of which £10,528 has been devoted to the buildings and fittings, nearly £500 paid for expenses and injury to statues, and the remaining £9,000 put to the book purchase fund. In the Reference Library there were quite 48,000 volumes, in addition to about 4,000 of patent specifications. Every great department of human knowledge was represented by the best known works. In history, biography, voyages, and travels, natural history, fine arts, all the greatest works, not only in English, but often in the principal European languages, had been gathered. Volumes of maps and plans, engravings of all sorts of antiquities, costumes, weapons, transactions of all the chief learned societies, and especially bibliography, or "books about books" had been collected with unceasing care, the shelves being loaded with costly and valuable works rarely found out of the great libraries of London, or Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, or Glasgow. Among the collections lost were many volumes relating to the early history of railways in England, originally collected by Mr. Charles Brewin, and supplemented by all the pamphlets and tracts procurable. Many of those volumes were full of cuttings from contemporary newspapers, and early reports of early railway companies, and of the condition of canals and roads. Still more valuable were many bundles of papers, letters, invoices, calculations, etc., concerning the early attempt to establish the cotton manufacture in Birmingham at the beginning of the last century, including the papers of Warren, the printer, and some letters of Dr. Johnson, and others relating the story of the invention of spinning by rollers--the work of John Wyatt and Lewis Paul--long before Arkwright's time. Among the immense collection of Birmingham books and papers were hundreds of Acts of Parliament, Birmingham Almanacs, Directories (from 1770) most curious, valuable, and rare; a heap of pamphlets on the Grammar School, Birmingham History, Topography, and Guides; the political pamphlets of Job Nott and John Nott, some of which were the only copies known, the