ent to him. There has since occurred the
following transaction. A gentleman in Chicago had written to Mr. Dana,
in Denver, to ask him whether he knew of a translation of the report of
a government railroad commission in Holland which had recently been
engaged in considering what kinds of paint are best to use in preserving
iron, and whether he could tell him where to find the results of certain
experiments which had been made in one of the bureaus of the U.S. Navy
Department. Mr. Dana passed along the question to me, knowing that I had
often to answer questions of that kind. In order to find an answer to
the first question, I at once set a young man at work looking at the
indexes of the late volumes of the _Railroad and Engineering Journal_,
and soon an important article was unearthed giving the results of the
investigations of the Dutch commission. This piece of information was
sent to Denver. I then wrote to Mr. Henry C. Baird, the Philadelphia
publisher, to see if he knew of the publication of a translation of the
report. He wrote back that he did not know of the publication of such a
translation, but that there was a long article on paints useful in the
preservation of iron in one of the most recently issued volumes of
Spons's "Receipts." He promised, however, to make further inquiries. So
he went to the rooms of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences and
inquired there what gentleman in the city was most likely to have the
information sought for. He was referred to some one connected with the
Pennsylvania Railroad Co., who told him that he was not aware that the
report had been translated, but referred the inquirer to an elaborate
article extending through several numbers of the well-known periodical,
_Iron_. Mr. Baird transmitted the information he had got to me and I
sent it and other pieces of information gained since my last letter to
the library of Denver. The information sent to Denver was sent to
Chicago. So by the aid of two far separated librarians a person in
Chicago, an intermediate city, distant from the homes of both, received
information which he desired through Denver, Worcester, and
Philadelphia. For an answer to his second question, this inquirer from
Chicago was referred to the Navy Department at Washington.

A clergyman in Colorado Springs, and this is a final illustration,
applied to the librarian of the same public Library in Denver for an old
book by Goldwin Smith. He referred him to me. I knew h