Historical Fires.*
Among the great fires of history, undoubtedly the burning of the Serapaeum library at Alexandria in the year 640, by the Caliph Omar I., is most widely mourned, as the destruction of 500,000 volumes cut off much of the record of human knowledge at that time. The general impression of the importance and significance of this fire is, no doubt, augmented in great measure by the barbaric answer of this Saracen conquerer, who replied to the protest against the burning with : “If the books are against the Koran, they are pernicious and must be destroyed ; if they agree with the Koran, they are redundant and need not be preserved. " And it is not generally remem. bered that Julius C.esar burned a larger library of 700,000
* From a paper by C. J. H. Woodbury of Boston, read before the Franklin Institute at Philadelphia, January S3, 1881.
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