156 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



which was appropriate to the period before 1775, Miss Penson has at the 

 date of this report nearly completed her inventory of the papers relating to 

 the United States or its citizens in that portion of the West Indian papers 

 which falls within the final period of forty years assigned to her care. 



The question may readily arise, why, when so much attention has been 

 given to the materials in foreign archives, so little has been bestowed on the 

 more abundant materials in American archives, since the publication in 1907 

 of the second edition of Messrs. Van Tyne and Leland's Guide to the Archives 

 of the Government of the United States in Washington and in 1911 of Mr. 

 Parker's Calendar of Papers in Washington Archives relating to the Territories 

 of the United States (to 1878). The answer is not recondite. Inventories of 

 the archives of the States have been published by the States themselves, or, 

 in a long series extending from 1900 to the present time, in the annual reports 

 of the Public Archives Commission established in the former year by the 

 American Historical Association. As to the archives of the Federal Govern- 

 ment in Washington, those portions of Messrs. Van Tyne and Leland's 

 Guides which are now out-of-date are so because of shiftings of material 

 effected with bewildering frequency, and still in progress, and because of 

 enormous additional papers resulting from the war and whose future treat- 

 ment and place of deposit are still uncertain. When the archive situation in 

 Washington is stabilized by the erection of the National archive building so 

 long and so urgently demanded, the Government or the Carnegie Institution 

 can produce a guide which will be valid long enough to justify the labor. 

 Toward that consummation the Director has for thirteen years, as a matier 

 of obvious duty, and as chairman of a committee of the American Historical 

 Association, contributed whatever effort he could. 



In the work upon the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United 

 States, Dr. Paullin has during the year completed, or in some cases nearly 

 completed, four portions of his work. First, he has completed two maps of 

 England (and Wales), showing the sources of migration of population to New 

 England and to Virginia, respectively, in the seventeenth century. Secondly, 

 he has prepared and carried to its completion the map of American explora- 

 tions in the West beyond the Mississippi, from 1803 to 1852, a map exhibiting 

 the lines of some twenty-seven different explorations; and he has nearly com- 

 pleted the map showing French explorations in the West from 1673 to 1794. 

 In preparing the latter, he has had the valuable assistance of Miss Louise 

 Phelps Kellogg, of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, whose knowledge 

 of the history of these French explorations is unrivaled. Thirdly, he has com- 

 pleted a series of five maps which exhibit the areas of negro, foreign, German, 

 Irish, and Swedish and Norwegian population in the United States, as shown 

 by the census of 1920. These maps, prepared from manuscript materials in 

 the office of the Bureau of the Census, as well as from its printed publications, 

 constitute the completing members of series prepared in former years, with 

 respect to the dates of the earlier censuses. Fourthly, Dr. Paullin has de- 

 voted the latter portion of the year's work to a series of maps intended to 

 exhibit the distribution of wealth in the United States, at various periods, and 

 the movements of commerce. He has completed five maps showing the dis- 

 tribution, at various periods from 1800 to 1910, of American banks, some 

 30,000 in number, and he has prepared four preliminary maps showing the 



