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THERE are days—and even seasons—when to the enthusiastic walker his favourite books make but a slight appeal. Indeed on such occasions you need not be surprised if you find him asserting, heretically and dogmatically, that there is no book that will rival in his affection the frayed and tattered and rain‐stained map that has so often been his companion on hill and moor. On the winter evenings, when the curtains are drawn and the rain‐storm whips the window pane, he will pore over it for many an hour, following again in fancy the paths he has trodden in the long summer days, recapturing perhaps the view that opened up before him when, rounding the hillside above Durisdeer, he looked over the gently swelling hills of Nithsdale with their woods, their trim fields, their white farm houses, set against the grey‐blue background of far‐off mountains of Galloway.

A few years after my Wanderjahr among the libraries which I have described it fell to my lot, as part of my duties as Lecturer in History at Jordanhill College, to undertake the work of introducing students to the fascinating task of exploring libraries and of employing books as instruments of research. This work was undertaken not primarily with the view of producing specialists in History but mainly from consideration of the fact that to a student trained in the constructive work of the historian the teaching of History to children becomes invested with an interest altogether unknown to people whose acquaintance with History has been limited to the laboured conning of mediocre text‐books.

WHERE books are gathered together, there is built an altar to Romance. Alike over the little fireside bookcase and over the high‐piled shelves of the municipal library its spirit hovers. In some places more readily than in others, however, does the book‐lover become immediately and instinctively aware of its presence. No visitor to Edinburgh who crosses Parliament Hall—whether abuzz with talk and thronged with groups of pacing advocates, or silent save for the ghostly voices of old Scottish debate and peopled by the shades of Fletcher of Saltoun, Lord Belhaven, and Chancellor Seafield—and passes thence down the steep narrow stairway to what was once the Laigh Parliament House but is now the National Library, can long remain insensible to the appeal of the place. Are you of the company of the Stevensonians? Wait but a moment and round yonder projecting book‐case will glide the elfin‐shade of R. L. S.—from that table he will pick up a hand‐lantern with its flickering candle and, swinging his vagabond Pharos, will disappear down a dark stairway. Are you a merchant and versed in the ways of mercantile houses? Here they will show you the massive leather‐bound ledgers of the Darien Company, the entries made with the scrupulous artistry of the days when men used the quill‐pen.

FINANCIAL fears are only less cruel than those of war, and lead men into extravagances which they would repudiate indignantly in their cooler moments. If the doings of the Economy Committee at Manchester in relation to children's libraries, as described in the article by Mr. Lamb in our last issue, are true, we have in them an example of a kind of retrenchment at the expense of the young which we hope is without parallel and will have no imitators. Some reduc‐tion of estimates we hear of from this or that place, but in few has the stupid policy which urges that if we spend nothing we shall all become rich been carried into full effect. Libraries always have suffered in times of crisis, whatever they are; we accept that, though doubtfully; but we do know that the people need libraries.

Our South African correspondent writes:—Considerable damage has been done to the University Library of the Witwatersrand as the result of an extensive fire which destroyed a large part of the collection and the building. The Library was, in the course of the past year, in process of reorganisation….. A plea for closer co‐operation between the libraries of South Africa was made by Mr. Percy Freer of Johannesburg at a meeting of the Witwatersrand and Victoria Branch of the South African Library Association. Mr. Freer said that most of the libraries were concentrating on particular subjects, and it was desirable that all libraries should be able to draw on the resources of each other. He suggested that the following libraries should function as regional centres with a view to relieving pressure on the National Central Library: the South African Public Library (Cape Town), Bloemfontein (operating with Kimberley), Maritzburg (with Durban), Johannesburg, Bulawayo and Port Elizabeth. The headquarters of the National Central Library itself should be attached to the State Library at Pretoria. A union catalogue and other bibliographical aids were desirable…. Dr. Gie (Secretary for Education) has been urging teachers to have a greater regard for books. He had been astonished to learn from recent investigations that many teachers not only did not read current books and periodicals regularly, but did not keep in touch with current topics through the newspapers. He advised teachers to assist in setting up libraries and centres where they did not exist.