NATHANIEL bhadstreet shurtleff. 483 



The first publication of Dr. Shurtleff, about the time of his receiving 

 his medical degree, was a small treatise on Phrenology, a subject in 

 which the visit of Dr. Spurzheim to this country in 1832 had excited 

 a certain degree of interest at that period. It was entitled " An 

 Epitome of Phrenology," and consisted of an abstract of the theo- 

 ries of the school of Gall, Spurzheim, and Combe, written in the 

 spirit of a believer, but without endeavoring to re-enforce those 'doc- 

 trines by fresh examples or arguments. It was fourteen or fifteen 

 years after this publication before Dr. Shurtleff again appeared as an 

 author, when he began in 1849 the series of works relating to our 

 early history by which his later life was distinguished with a little 

 tract entitled "The Passengers in the Mayflower," which compressed the 

 results of great research and industry within a narrow compass. This 

 was followed by brief Genealogical Memoirs of William Shurtleff and 

 of Polder Thomas Leverett, and by a monograph, privately printed, on 

 the " Deaths at Marshfield in 1658 and IGGG by Lightning." A little 

 later Dr. Shurtleff was intrusted by the General Court of Massachu- 

 setts with the editorship of " The Records of the Governor and Com- 

 pany of the Massachusetts Bay in New England," the first two volumes 

 of which appeared in 1853. The next year he published three more 

 volumes bringing the Records down to the Presidency of Joseph Dud- 

 ley. In 1855, Dr. Shurtleff was appointed by a legislative resolve to 

 edit the " Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England," 

 the first four volumes of which appeared in that year, followed by the 

 fifth and sixth in 1856, and the seventh and eighth in 1857, In the 

 year 1858, the political complexion of the State government having 

 changed, that great cardinal doctrine of our modern politics. Rotation 

 in Office, devisetl to secure the Survival of the Unfittest, was applied 

 to him, and he was relieved from tlie task he was so eminently fitted to 

 perform. He discharged this laborious duty in the most thorough 

 and conscientious manner. In his own words, he " closely collated ike. 

 proof-sheets with the original record, and consequently, with consid- 

 erable labor, compared every word of the printed copy with th^ original 

 manuscript, and also revised all doubtful words and passages with the 

 same." Among his smaller publications may be mentioned " A Per- 

 petual Calendar for Old and New Style," designed to relieve the 

 student of history from the embarrassments sometimes occasioned by 

 the difference of the two styles. Also a ''Decimal System for. the 

 Arrano-ement and Administration of Libraries," which described the 

 plan he had himself invented for the management of the Boston Public 

 Library, when he was one of the original trustees of that institution, 



