154 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



Though it is impossible to contemplate the great labor and expenditure 

 involved in a thoroughgoing search for all these, so many catalogues and lists 

 of them have been printed, by European libraries and others, that a large 

 advance toward knowledge of them could be obtained by combining all the 

 data found in such printed accounts. 



Mr. Matteson's work has consisted in drawing off from such printed cata- 

 logues or lists those items which indicate or describe manuscripts relating to 

 American history. The work has been carried out with great thoroughness 

 in the library of Harvard University, the Boston Public Library, that of the 

 Massachusetts Historical Society, that of Yale University, the New York 

 Public Library, that of Columbia University, and the Library of Congress, 

 and with full and careful use of all the catalogues which they contain, either 

 as separate publications or in bibliographical journals or elsewhere. The 

 result is a collection which will apparently make about 200 pages of print, 

 and lists some 2,000 different manuscripts. The titles and descriptions of 

 these have simply been drawn off from the catalogues as they stand, their 

 verification or further elaboration being out of the question without pro- 

 hibitive expense; but inasmuch as nearly all these manuscripts are quite 

 unknown to American historical students, it is believed that the manual will 

 be considered a valuable addition to their means of research. 



TEXTUAL PUBLICATIONS OF DOCUMENTS. 



From the beginning of October to the end of the year reported upon, with 

 the exception of the months already mentioned as spent in the service of 

 Mount Holyoke College, Miss Davenport has worked in Washington or in 

 the Harvard College library upon the second volume of her European Treaties 

 hearing on the History of the United States. Five treaties have been completed, 

 extending the work to the Treaty of Ryswick, 1697. 



Progress of Dr. Burnett's Letters of Members of the Continental Congress 

 has been marked by the publication, in May, of his second volume. It runs 

 from July 5, 1776, to the end of the year 1777, and contains, besides the 795 

 letters, or parts of letters or diaries, mentioned in the report last year, a pref- 

 ace interpreting portions of the documentary material and making sensible 

 additions to our understanding of the actions of the Congress, and a detailed 

 record of the elections to membership in the Congress by the various States, 

 and of the dates of attendance of the individual members. One-third of the 

 letters dating from the second half of 1776 are not found elsewhere in print; 

 more than half of the letters bearing dates in 1777 are now printed for the 

 first time. The contribution of new information made by this volume is 

 therefore much greater than that in its predecessor, since the period from the 

 opening of the Congress to July 4, 1776, has always received an exceptional 

 amount of attention, while the doings of the Congress in later periods — and 

 subsequent volumes will show this increasingly — have thus far been much 

 less thoroughly made known, and call for much fuller illumination from 

 letters of the members. The present volume casts an especial amount of 

 light on the problems of army organization, military supply, plans for execu- 

 tive departments, finance, and especially the formation of the Articles of 

 Confederation. Dr. Burnett has also advanced largely during the year the 

 preparation of his careful annotations to the text, already prepared, of his 

 third volume. 



