I08 REPORTS ON INVESTIGATIONS AND PROJECTS. 



press in March, a volume of 289 pages, the contents and uses of which were 

 sufficiently described in the last annual report. Historical reviews and Euro- 

 pean scholars familiar with the Vatican and other Roman archives have 

 spoken of it since its publication in such a manner as to leave no doubt that 

 it will fulfill the purposes for which it was intended — to call increased atten- 

 tion to the value of the Roman archives for important aspects of American 

 history and to furnish investigators with guidance to the materials there 

 preserved. Mention may be made of the most accessible of these testi- 

 monies, the notice of the book in the American Historical Review (xvi, 822), 

 by Rev. Thomas Hughes, S. J. 



Prof. William H. Allison's "Inventory of unpublished material for Amer- 

 ican religious history in Protestant Church archives and other repositories," 

 a volume of 254 pages, was issued in May. Its contents were described in 

 the last annual report. From the nature of the case, a survey of several 

 score of depositories which hitherto have been little used for purposes of 

 historical composition and in many cases have never received systematic 

 arrangement, must be regarded as a pioneer attempt. Deficiencies will from 

 time to time be noted, and materials in repositories not known of at the time 

 of composition of the volume will subsequently become known. But it is 

 already evident that the book will be useful in stimulating work in American 

 religious history along lines hitherto insufficiently followed. 



In September appeared Mr. David W. Parker's "Calendar of papers in 

 Washington archives relating to the Territories of the United States (to 

 1873)," a volume of 476 pages. Its arrangement, as described in last year's 

 report, is in the alphabetical order of former and present Territories, under 

 each of which, in a chronological order, appear brief notes of the contents 

 and place of deposit of letters and other documents, to the number of nearly 

 10,000 in all, which Mr. Parker has found in the various scattered archives 

 of Washington and which relate to the constitutional, political, and general 

 history of the Territories down to 1873. Published so recently, the book has 

 not yet come to the notice of historical scholars in any extended degree; but 

 it is believed that it will signalize to them an unexpected wealth of historical 

 material, in its particular line, in the Washington archives. 



The "Guide to the manuscript materials relating to American history in 

 the German state archives," by Prof. Marion D. Learned, of the University 

 of Pennsylvania, reached the office of the Department, in its final manuscript 

 form, in January. Its final preparation for printing took a great deal of 

 time. This was partly due to the absence of several members of the Depart- 

 ment from Washington. Of the diminished force remaining there, only such 

 as had an accurate and quite extensive knowledge of earlier and later Ger- 

 man as v/ell as of earlier and later American history could profitably work 

 upon it, and these were abundantly occupied otherwise. That which remained 

 to do to the manuscript was in part owing to the circumstances of its prepa- 

 ration, which involved rapid examination of more than 40 archives, in a 



