What is it about old books that makes them so very difficult to give up? We have hundreds in boxes, and a few hundred more already shelved and stacked, and we have just begun going through them to acertain which we keep and which must leave forthwith.

Here's a copy of "Blakiston's New Gould Medical Dictionary", complete with line drawings and color plates and printed in 1949 (3rd printing). Not a bedtime reading choice, but full of interesting tidbits.

And this one: "Travels of William Bartram" in a paperback Dover edition, unabridged with all original illustrations. Not worth more than a couple of dollars, but wonderful reading.

One more: "The Fern Allies of North America North of Mexico", printed in 1904, written by Willard Nelson Clute and more than 150 illustrations by Ida Martin Chute.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.