| Description | 'The President has handed me your letter of the 16th about the Challenger Reports, which will have to be referred to the Challenger Committee, on whose recommendations the Treasury act in making presentations of the Reports. In the meantime however it would facilitate matters if you could let me know, more precisely that your letter does, which volumes you most particularly desire to secure for the Athenaeum library; because some are scarce, and some are out of print; and it would be futile for us to make requisitions on the Treasury for any of these. The Reports are still on sale, and the Treasury, more suo, likes to recoup itself some of its expenses when it can. We have therefore generally to make out a good case on grounds of scientific utility for a claim to presentation volumes.' |