aboring classes in the capital, till it was
closed at the commencement of the war.

During the transition period the books were transferred from one
locality to another, and in the process the best works disappeared,
until the island's first civil governor, Charles H. Allen, at the
suggestion of Commissioner of Education Martin G. Brumbaugh, rescued
the remainder and made it the nucleus of the first _American_ free
library.

The second Puerto Rican public library was opened by Don Ramon
Santaella, October 15, 1880, in the basement of the Town Hall. It
began with 400 volumes, and possesses to-day 6,361 literary and
didactic books in different languages.

The Puerto Rican Atheneum Library was established in 1876. Its
collection of books, consisting principally of Spanish and French
literature, is an important one, both in numbers and quality. It has
been enriched by accessions of books from the library of the extinct
Society of Friends of the Country. It is open to members of the
Atheneum only, or to visitors introduced by them.

The Casino Espanol possesses a small but select library with a
comfortable reading-room. Its collection of books and periodicals is
said to be the richest and most varied in the island. It was founded
in 1871.

The religious association known under the name of Conferences of St.
Vincent de Paul had a small circulating library of religious works
duly approved by the censors. The congregation was broken up in 1887
and the library disappeared.

The Provincial Institute of Secondary Education, which was located in
the building now occupied by the free library and legislature,
possessed a small pedagogical library which shared the same fate as
that of the Society of Friends of the Country.

The Spanish Public Works Department possessed another valuable
collection of books, mostly on technical and scientific subjects. A
number of books on other than technical subjects, probably from the
extinct libraries just referred to, have been added to the original
collection, and the whole, to the number of 1,544 volumes in excellent
condition, exist under the care of the chief of the Public Works
Department.

Besides the above specified libraries of a public and collegiate
character, there are some private collections of books in the
principal towns of the island. Chief among these is the collection of
Don Fernando Juncos, of San Juan, which contains 15,000 volumes of
classic and preceptive literatur