What has been said of the dearth of public libraries in London is in part true of all Great Britain. There are not a score of libraries in all her European domain that number over 100,000 volumes, and it is only within the nineteenth century that the public or free library system began to grow in favor. Indeed, such growth may be said to date from as late a period as 1850, when the Manchester Free Reference Library was established. It has shown in fifty years a most marvelous growth, and contains at present some 255,000 volumes. Great Britain has not neglected to encourage the use of libraries among her colonists. At Ottawa, Canada, is the library of Parliament. It was founded in 1815, and grew slowly till 1841, when the two libraries of Upper and Lower Canada were consolidated. It was subsequently destroyed by fire, and in 1855 reëstablished. Since then it has grown rapidly, and at present contains over 150,000 volumes. The Laval University library, at Quebec, is the next most extensive in Canada, containing over 100,000 volumes. The South African Public Library was founded at Cape Town in 1818, and has grown to contain some 50,000 volumes, many of them of great importance as bearing on the languages and customs of African peoples. In Australia are many libraries of considerable extent, whose volumes are, as a rule, free to all readers. The largest of these is at Melbourne, and is called the Public Library of Victoria. It is a collection of considerably over 150,000 books and pamphlets, many of which relate to Australasian themes. The Sidney Free Public Library is next to that at Melbourne in importance. It is said to contain the largest collection of works special to Australia in the world. The book collections of China, and indeed throughout the Orient, are by no means inconsiderable, and the favorite works relate to religion, philosophy, poetry, history, and the sciences. They are generally large and of encyclopædic style and proportions. Thus a Chinese history of national events from the third century B. C. to the seventeenth A. D. occupies sixty-six volumes, as bound in European style for the British Museum. Libraries in Japan are more numerous, convenient, and extensive than in China and elsewhere in the Orient. The University library at Tokio, Japan, contains well nigh 200,000 volumes.