DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 157 



volume extends through July 4, 1776, the second to the end of 1778. 

 Both will soon be offered for printing. 



In order that the ''Proceedings and Debates of ParUament respecting 

 North America" might not prove too voluminous, as was at one time 

 apprehended, an attempt was made to distinguish more severely the 

 materials which should be regarded as belonging in the volumes from 

 those which should be excluded. Besides votes and debates, it is 

 intended that petitions, reports on petitions, and reports of committees 

 shall be retained in full: but that accounts and estimates drawn from 

 the Customs Office, War Office, etc., letters and papers of officers and 

 individuals, and other like material which in its origin was not 

 addressed to ParUament but which was called for incidentally in 

 Parliamentary considerations, shall be excluded, except for mention 

 by title. Measures have also been adopted for abbreviating certain 

 pai'ts of the Journal material. The finding of certain acts relating 

 to the Newfoundland fisheries has pushed back the beginning of the 

 volume from 1584 to 1542, and made necessary some further searching 

 for Journal material, though it was supposed, a year ago, that the work 

 on all journals had been finished. During the past year, up to the 

 time when the National Board for Historical Service was organized, 

 Mr. Stock devoted himself to the critical sifting of materials respecting 

 debates and the gradual preparation and annotation of the final text 

 of his first volume. This process had at that time been completed to 

 the end of the reign of James I. From the beginning of sunmier to the 

 end of October, Mr. Stock spent practically all of his time in work 

 for the Board. 



A further step toward the advancement of this series has consisted 

 in the obtaining from London of copies of debate material in manu- 

 scripts of the British Museum, substantially complete to the end of 

 the seventeenth century. A London photographer, engaged to repro- 

 duce the pages relating to America in Henry Cavendish's "Journal of 

 Debates in the Parliament of 1768-1774," preserved among the Egerton 

 Manuscripts in the British Museum, has completed this series of pho- 

 tographs. Most of the parcels of prints sent week by week have now 

 arrived. It is believed that the photographs, even those of Cavendish's 

 shorthand pages, which it will apparently not be difficult to decipher, 

 will make substantial additions to our knowledge of proceedings relating 

 to America in a Parliament otherwise but little reported. 



Miss Donnan, in portions of her time not occupied with her work 

 upon the American Historical Review, has continued her search for 

 material upon the history of the African slave-trade, the sources and 

 methods of supply, during the whole period between the beginning 

 of the fifteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. 



