110 REPORTS ON INVESTIGATIONS AND PROJECTS. 



miralty and various expired commissions and special collections. The two 

 volumes are the product of several years of labor on the part of the author. 

 The delays which have been caused by the reclassification to which large sec- 

 tions of the Public Record Office were subjected after the completion of the 

 original plan of the work had their obvious disadvantages, but have enabled 

 Professor Andrews, in the course of the revisions thus imposed, to secure 

 an added degree of perfection in the composition of the book. The reclassi- 

 fications spoken of having now been brought to an end, so far as they affect 

 any important portions of his work, he has this year, by spending the sum- 

 mer months in London, finished the manuscript of the second volume. The 

 first is now printed and within a few weeks of publication. 



This volume, and the other Public Record Office volume already spoken 

 of, and the "Guide to the manuscript materials for the history of the United 

 States to 1783, in the British Museum, in minor London libraries, and in 

 the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge," by Professor Andrews and Miss 

 Frances G. Davenport, Publication No. 90, issued in 1908, complete the sur- 

 vey originally planned of London materials, in public depositories, for our 

 Colonial and Revolutionary history. For the period subsequent to 1783 pro- 

 vision was originally made by the researches of Dr. Charles O. Paullin and 

 Prof. Frederic L. Paxson, conducted in London in 1910. These embraced, 

 at the Public Record Office, the Admiralty papers, Colonial Office papers, 

 Foreign Office papers, and War Office and other papers for the period from 

 1783 to 1837 (to 1850 in the case of the War Office papers), the papers of the 

 Privy Council Office for the same period, those of the House of Lords from 

 1783 to i860, and such material in the British Museum as was not included in 

 the volume prepared by Professor Andrews and Miss Davenport. Later per- 

 mission to carry the examination of the Colonial Office papers down from 

 1837 to i860 was granted, and this work was carried through by Dr. Paullin. 



It remained to carry down to the same advanced period (i860) the exam- 

 ination of the Foreign Office and Admiralty papers and those of the Privy 

 Council, in respect to which the desired extension of date had been ulti- 

 mately accorded. At the time when the last report of the Department was 

 concluded a portion of this work, in respect to the Foreign Office papers, 

 had been performed by Prof. Charles E. Fryer, of McGill University, and 

 Mr. David W. Parker had begun its continuation from the point at which 

 Professor Fryer had been compelled to leave it. During November and 

 December Mr. Parker completed the work, upon the same scale and in the 

 same manner in which it had been conducted by those who had preceded 

 him. Inequalities and differences were inevitable in a manuscript prepared 

 thus by four different hands ; but on the whole their extent was less than 

 might have been expected, and before the end of May the finished manu- 

 script was despatched from this office. 



The only other archive-guide which the Department has now in the press 

 is Mr. Parker's "Guide to the materials for United States history in Cana- 



