It has been found impossible to estimate, with any degree of accuracy, the amount of money spent on new books by the libraries, as more than half of them fail to make any report on this point. Permanent funds, amounting to $6,105,581, are held by 358 libraries, and 1,364 have none; 1,960 make no report. The endowments are divided very unevenly among the classes, as this table shows: _Number Reporting._ _Amount._ Educational 54 $775,801 Professional 54 695,610 Historical 26 742,572 Government none Proprietary Public 124 1,079,359 Free Public 93 2,804,964 Miscellaneous 7 7,275 This, however, does not show what is spent yearly in buying books, an item which only one in about twenty-three of the libraries report. The amount is $562,407, and at $1.25 per volume, which is Mr. Winsor's estimate of the average cost of books, the yearly acquisitions by purchase are limited to about 450,000 volumes. Figures such as we have presented are really no guide to the worth of an individual library, or of a library system, to the people. That can be learned only by the comparison of experiences by the men who have charge of the books and their distribution, but the elements for such an analysis are wanting. The yearly use of books in 742 libraries in 1875 was 8,879,869 volumes, or from two to two and a half times the number of volumes on the shelves of the reporting libraries. Great differences exist in this respect. Few libraries are so eagerly sought as the military post library on Angel Island, California, which distributed its 772 books so often that its yearly circulation was 4,500! The Chicago Public Library, with 48,100 volumes, circulated 403,356; Boston Athenæum, with 105,000 volumes, circulated 33,000; Boston Public Library, with 299,869 volumes, circulated 758,493. These statistics are sufficient. It is probable that the libraries of the country, costing say $16,000,000 for books, and spending more than $1,400,000 yearly, afford to the people the use of from twenty-four to thirty million volumes every year. It cannot be doubted that they form a very important factor in our social and national economy. More than a thousand librarians are engaged in the conduct of the public libraries, many of them men of great ability and culture. There can be no doubt that their study of this important problem will result in the establishing of an intelligent and harmonious system of supplying a nation with the reading matter it requires. JOHN A. CHURCH. HOW NATIONAL BANK NOTES ARE REDEEMED.