Professional libraries are—
| 1. | Law | 135, | with | 330,353 | volumes |
| 2. | Medical | 64 | " | 159,045 | " |
| 3. | Theological | 86 | " | 633,369 | " |
| 4. | Scientific | 75 | " | 283,992 | " |
Here we have two surprises. One is that lawyers, with their interminable "reports" falling from nearly every court in the country, and never becoming really obsolete (a peculiarity that hardly any other professional works enjoy), should have so few and such small libraries. The reason probably lies in the assiduity with which each lawyer collects the works needed in his line of practice. The other surprise is that a profession so old and active as that of medicine should be so poorly represented in books. The lawyers have an average of about 2,400 books in their libraries, and the largest collections in the list are that of the Law Institute in New York, 20,000 volumes; Harvard School, 15,000; Social Law Library, Boston, 13,000; and Law Association of San Francisco, 12,500. No other reaches 10,000 volumes, and in fact the above deductions leave the others with about 2,000 volumes each. The medical gentlemen are still worse off. There are in the Surgeon General's office 40,000 volumes; Philadelphia College of Physicians, 18,753; Pennsylvania College of Physicians, 12,500; and New York Hospital, 10,000; leaving an average of 1,300 volumes to each of the other institutions. In these figures we have an indication of the excellent work done by the Army Bureau at Washington. Its 40,000 bound volumes are supplemented by 40,000 pamphlets, making a collection which the profession greatly needed. The theologians seem to have attended as energetically to the collection as to the making of books. In the last division of this class belong the engineering, agricultural, mining, botanical, military, and naval schools and societies, and they appear to give considerable importance to their libraries. Though they are mostly young institutions, the average number of books is 3,800. In addition to the bound volumes mentioned above, the societies own 218,852 pamphlets and 2,169 manuscripts, the proportion of these two kinds of literary works being naturally large in scientific collections. The largest libraries are those of the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass., 30,655 volumes, and 105,408 pamphlets, and "many" MSS.; Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, 30,000 volumes and 35,000 pamphlets; Wagner Free Institution of Science, Philadelphia, 15,000 volumes; Museum of Comparative Zoölogy (Harvard), 13,000; Illinois Industrial University, 10,000; School of Mines, New York, 7,000; Sheffield Scientific School, 5,000.
Historical societies have been much more actively employed in collecting than the table we have given indicates. Since the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 no less than one hundred and sixty societies have been formed, and Dr. Homes of the New York State Library reports their collections to aggregate more than 482,000 volumes and 568,000 pamphlets. The number of MSS. is 88,771, besides 1,361 bound volumes of them. The largest accumulations are:
| Volumes. | Pamphlets. | MSS. | |
| Am. Antiq. Soc., Worcester | 60,497 | ||
| New York Historical | 60,000 | 12,000 | 15,000 |
| Wisconsin Historical | 33,347 | 31,653 | 300 |
| Long Island Historical | 26,000 | 25,000 | |
| Massachusetts Historical | 23,000 | 45,000 | 1,000 v. |
| Congregational Library, Boston | 22,895 | 95,000 | 550 |
| Connecticut Historical | 16,000 | 20,000 | |
| Amer. Philosoph., Philadelphia | 20,000 | 15,000 | 100 v. |
| German Society, Philadelphia | 16,000 | ||
| Pennsylvania Historical | 16,000 | 30,000 | 25,000 |
It is among these societies that we find the largest average of any class, excepting the Government. Historical libraries contain about 8,400 bound volumes, 7,000 pamphlets, and 1,000 MSS. to each collection. In spite of this the public collections are often surpassed in completeness in special branches by private ones. In this country a public institution can rarely compete successfully with an eager and determined private buyer.
Government libraries include others than those for the use of officials, as the following list shows:
| Libraries. | Volumes. | |
| 1. Government | 35 | 695,633 |
| 2. State and Territorial | 47 | 834,219 |
| 3. Garrison | 40 | 32,745 |
The official libraries are of several kinds, and as many of them are of prime importance, we may be permitted to specify them more minutely than those of any other class:
| Volumes. | ||
| Library of | Congress | 300,000 |
| " | House of Representatives | 125,000 |
| " | Surgeon General | 40,000 |
| " | State Department | 29,000 |
| " | Senate | 25,000 |
| " | Patent Office | 23,000 |
| " | War Department | 13,000 |
| " | Attorney General | 12,000 |
| " | Treasury | 8,440 |
| " | Solicitor of Treasury | 6,000 |
| " | Post Office | 6,301 |
| " | Hydrographer's Office | 7,000 |
| " | Dep't. Agriculture | 7,000 |
| " | Bureau Statistics | 6,000 |
| " | Naval Observatory | 7,000 |
| " | Coast Survey | 6,000 |