DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 159 



In connection with this function of the Department as an historical 

 clearing-house, it may be well to mention the accumulation in our 

 office, as a by-product of work intended for publication, of matter 

 not intended for that purpose or finally deemed unsuitable for it. 

 Ten years have brought together a considerable store of such mate- 

 rials, which it is desirable that historical inquirers should have every 

 opportunity to use. Such use is always permitted to students who 

 come to the office, and opportunity for it can sometimes be given, by 

 loan or by copies, to those who are at a distance. Therefore, it may 

 be well, in a report intended for publication, to list the chief collec- 

 tions of this sort, as follows : 



We have a collection, on some 40,000 slips, of notes of about that 

 number of documents, in the English Pubhc Record Office and other 

 foreign archives, which have been published in printed volumes or of 

 which manuscript copies exist in American libraries or other reposi- 

 tories. Of those of the former sort, the printed documents, there 

 is also a separate list, available for loan. We have a list, on some 

 58,000 slips, of all the documents in 143 selected legajos relating to 

 the history of the United States in the section of the Archives of the 

 Indies at Seville called ''Papeles procedentes de la Isla de Cuba." 

 We have also copies of the extensive and itemized inventory of all 

 the legajos of that subdivision, made in Havana at the time when the 

 papers composing it were transferred from Cuba to Spain. We have 

 the negatives of Mr. Hill's photographs of Seville documents. We 

 have a body of cards analyzing large portions of the diplomatic and 

 consular archives of the Department of State, with entries for each 

 volume in many of the important subdivisions, and, throughout a 

 considerable period of the English and French correspondence, for 

 each despatch. We have also special reports on the archives of the 

 Bahama Islands, of the British West Indies, of British Columbia, 

 and of the Netherlands; a large collection of notes on the manuscript 

 materials for American history preserved in North Carolina ; and a 

 more miscellaneous collection of similar notes on materials elsewhere. 



In several cases historical scholars working in Washington with 

 some assistance from this office have requited the aid by leaving with 

 us dupHcates of their sets of slips calendaring particular portions of 

 the materials in the Washington archives which they have investi- 

 gated. These are necessarily fragmentary, but will often be helpful. 



Another class of data consists in notes taken for the purpose of 

 being incorporated in certain of our publications, but subsequently 

 excluded upon more strict definition of the scope of those volumes. 

 Thus we have shps mentioning many territorial papers not included 

 in Mr. Parker's "Calendar," and others representing Continental 

 Congress materials not finally included in the scheme of Dr. Burnett's 

 series. It should also be said that the materials of the books now in 



