Within a short time, in 1878, we began to publish a quarterly
bulletin. In the first number "Library notes" begins: "Much time
and thought have been given to suggesting in this bulletin good
books for boys and girls. As a rule, they read too much. Our
accounts show that one boy has taken 102 story-books in six
months, and one girl 112 novels in the same time. One book a week
is certainly enough, with school studies. Within the last month
one boy has asked us for Jack Harkaway's stories, another for
bound volumes of the Police News, and a third for 'The murderer
and the fortune teller,' 'The two sisters and the avenger' and
'The model town and the detective.' These are not in the library
and will not be. The demand for girls for the New York Weekly
novels is not small. We shall gladly cooperate with fathers and
mothers in the choice of children's books."

Of what we now call nature-books there were very few written or
well illustrated for children, though the library had John
Burroughs, Harris's "Insects injurious to vegetation" and
Samuels's "Birds of New England and the adjacent states." There
was little interest in out-of-door study, and I have never
forgotten the contempt on the face of one boy when instead of
Mayne Reid's "Boy hunters," which was out, he was offered "The
butter- fly hunters," or the scorn with which he repeated the
title. All that is changed, thanks to the influence of schools
and teachers, and children are no longer ignorant of common birds
and insects. St. Nicholas helped in opening their eyes, when a
librarian, Harlan H. Ballard, of Pittsfield, organized the
Agassiz Association with a monthly report in the magazine. We had
a chapter, Hartford B., that met for years out of doors on
Saturday mornings through the spring, early summer and autumn,