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ciated by the students, and the library is in constant use. The number of books has grown until it is considerably over 100,000, and is increasing at the rate of a thousand a month. It is surpassed in numbers by but two university libraries in America. Books are loaned only to officers, students, and alumni, but any respectable person is free to use the library for scholarly purposes. In his inaugural address President Low said:

There is no library in the city, I venture to think there is none in the country, where the student is more welcome, where the facilities granted him are so great. No part of the college system is more liberally supported or more generously dealt with, for it is recognized to be a laboratory of all the departments of the college.

Besides what may be spoken of as the general library, there is a special library of political science, intended to include the most recent and most valuable European and American works, particular attention being given to providing the material needed for original investigation. The department of history and political science alone contains 18,000 volumes.

The law library, of about 10,000 volumes, contains a complete series of the reports and statutes of the United States and of New York; full sets of the reports of nearly all the other States, with statutes and digests; a full series of the English and Irish reports from the yearbooks to the present time, with the English and Irish statutes and digests; the leading treatises on English and American private law; the best editions of the Roman civil law and the leading commentaries on it, both ancient and modern, and the codes, legislative acts, and special treatises on the law of Germany, France, Italy, and other nations, including the South American States. It includes the original law library of William Samuel Johnson, the first president of Columbia College after the Revolution, and one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States; also the law library of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, and is especially rich in international, constitutional, and administrative law.

The library also contains, in pure and applied science, an unusually fine collection of periodicals and serials, including complete sets of nearly all the important English, French, and German journals in chemistry, chemical technology, mining, metallurgy, engineering in its various branches, electric science, photography, public hygiene, pure mathematics, astronomy, geology, botany, and kindred sciences. The number of current periodicals and serials taken is more than 800, and the funds at the disposal of the library for the purchase of books enable the officers of instruction in the various departments to put into the library the latest treatises and monographs on their respective subjects.

Besides the library, the property of the college, the students have also access to the library of the New York Academy of Sciences.

This collection consists of about 6,000 volumes, largely made up of the proceedings of learned societies of America and Europe, and is deposited in the library.

THE HERBARIA.

The president's report for 1869 contains a description of the herbarium, as it existed at that time, written by Dr. Torrey, by whom the larger portion of it was presented to the college:

The collection is peculiarly rich in what are called type specimens, being the identical plants named by the authors who have described or noticed them in their published works. The college herbarium is the standard for many works on North American botany, such as The Flora of the Northern and Middle States; The Flora of North America, by Torrey and Gray: The Flora of the State of New York; nearly all of Dr. Gray's works and those of Engelmann, Sullivant, Tuckerman, Chapman, and many others.

The botanical collections of nearly all the United States Pacific railroad surveys were made the subject of special reports, which were published by order of Congress; and the type specimens, with few exceptions, are in our herbarium. So are those extensive collections made by the Government botanists in the five or six years occupied in the Mexican boundary survey. Full sets of the plants were reserved for reference. We have also an extensive collection of plants from the United States North Pacific exploring expedition, under Commodores Rodgers and Ringgold, and many from Commodore Perry's Japan expedition.

All the plants obtained by Fremont in his explorations are preserved in the college herbarium. We have nearly every plant described in the valuable botany of the States north of Virginia and west to the Mississippi, by Dr. Gray; and of Dr. Chapman's Southern Flora, identified by the authors themselves.

Of California plants we have very full collections, and in a fine state of preservation. The Rocky Mountains, Utah, and Colorado are well represented by what we have received from most of the explorers of those regions. Indeed we have been so fortunate as to have received sets of plants from nearly all the botanists who have visited or surveyed the remote parts of North America, even beyond the Arctic circle. Many of these were received through the kindness of Sir William Hooker, to whose charge were committed, by the British Government, the various collections made in the Hudson Bay regions to the Pacific coast. His extensive Flora of British America was founded on these collections, and the author of that splendid work shared them liberally with us. We have also many plants from Alaska, some of them received before we purchased that Territory.

The botany of the Southwestern States is well represented in the college herbarium.

Of foreign plants we have vast numbers, embracing almost a complete flora of Europe, named by distinguished botanists, with a good number from Africa, especially those of the Cape of Good Hope, many of them types of what are described in the Cape Flora of Harvey and Sonder, recently published by the British Government.

In East India botany we are rich, having received liberally of the plants collected under the auspices of the British Government. China has furnished us with many rare species, and we have lately been very largely supplied with choice Japan plants from the botanists of the Imperial botanic garden of St. Petersburg. A special interest is felt in the botany of Japan, since it has been shown that its flora is so nearly related to that of North America, and the specimens received from St. Petersburg are all originals of a late flora of Japan.1

1Report of President Barnard to the trustees, 1869.

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