The Libraries of the United States.

The "Science" publishes a very interesting abstract of some of the figures furnished by the "Library Journal" about our American libraries:

The double number of the "Library Journal," bearing the date January and February, will be very valuable for future reference because of the tables it contains concerning the libraries of the United States. The statistics are taken in the first instance from advanced sheets of the forthcoming report of the bureau of education, and an addition is made of the names of the librarians and a classification of the libraries according to size. The government list comprises all libraries having 300 volumes or over, and contains 5,338. The "Library Journal," however, only reprints the information concerning those of 1,000 volumes or over, and these number 2,981. Forty seven of these have over 50,000 volumes; and among the forty-seven are the public libraries of Boston, Chicago and Cincinnati, and the libraries of Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Cornell and Brown universities. These forty-seven libraries aggregate 5.026,472 volumes; and the whole list of 5,338 libraries aggregates 20,622,076 volumes, or one volume to every three persons in the country. In round numbers, the United States has one library to every ten thousand of population, though in many states the proportion is far greater. New Hampshire, for example, has a library to every 2,700 persons. The neighboring states of Massachusetts and Connecticut furnish a library to every 3,134 and 3,479 persons respectively. California, Colorado, Wyoming and Michigan stand well up on the list. The Southern States, as might be expected, make the worst showing, Arkansas bringing up the rear with one library to every 50,158 of population.