e and social and economic science,
1,200 volumes of which bear the author's autographs.

The desire for intellectual improvement began to manifest itself in
the interior of the island a few years after the establishment of the
first public library in the capital. The municipality of Ponce founded
a library in 1894. It contains 809 bound volumes and 669 pamphlets in
English, German, French, and Spanish, many of them duplicates. The
general condition of the books is bad, and the location of the library
altogether unsuitable. There was a municipal appropriation of 350
pesos per annum for library purposes, but since 1898 it has not been
available.

Mayaguez founded its public library in 1872. It possesses over 5,000
volumes, with a small archeological and natural history museum
attached to it.

Some of the smaller towns also felt the need of intellectual
expansion, and tried to supply it by the establishment of
reading-rooms. Arecibo, Vega-Baja, Toa-Alta, Yauco, Cabo-Rojo,
Aguadilla, Humacao, and others made efforts in this direction either
through their municipalities or private initiative. A few only
succeeded, but they did not outlive the critical times that commenced
with the war, aggravated by the hurricane of August, 1898.

* * * * *

Since the American occupation of the island, four public libraries
have been established. Two of them are exclusively Spanish, the
Circulating Scholastic Library, inaugurated in San Juan on February
22, 1901, by Don Pedro Carlos Timothe, and the Circulating Scholastic
Library of Yauco, established a month later under the auspices of S.
Egozene of that town. The two others are, one, largely English, the
Pedagogical Library, established under the auspices of the
Commissioner of Education, and the San Juan Free Library, to which Mr.
Andrew Carnegie has given $100,000, and which is polyglot, and was
formally opened to the public April 20, 1901. There is also a growing
number of libraries in the public schools. From the above data it
appears that, owing to the peculiar conditions that obtained in this
island, the people of Puerto Rico were very slow in joining the
movement of intellectual expansion which began in Spanish America in
the eighteenth century. They did so at last, unaided and with their
own limited resources, even before the obstacles placed in their way
by the Government were removed. If they have not achieved more, it is
because within the l