LXXII ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Confederation, in the fireproof rooms of the provincial registrar in the 
new legislative building at Quebec. 
Several friends of progress, since that period, the first prime-minister 
of the province, Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau, Hon. Gédéon Ouimet, later on 
the Hons. Jean Blanchet and C. E. A. Gagnon, provincial secretaries; 
urged on by historical societies and by ardent students of Canadian 
history, Francis Parkman, George Baby, Abbés Verreau, Bois, Tanguay, 
Casgrain and others, succeeded in inducing the legislature to vote funds 
to print several voluminous series of these documents in 1883 and in 
following years, nor ought one omit recording the hearty co-operation 
of the late Dr. T. B. Aikins, of Nova Scotia. 
A powerful impulse had been given to the collection of public 
archives in this province, by the creation at Ottawa in 1872, of the 
archives office, an annex to the department of agriculture, in which our 
colleague, Mr. Douglas Brymner, has won golden opinions. 
Any one conversant with the neglected state of our archives in the 
past, will readily admit that the era of collecting and preservation was 
not commenced one day too soon, though matters in this respect were 
not so bad in Canada as they were, until lately, in England. 
Mr. Brymner, after mentioning the early legislation in England to 
inquire into the state of public records and to devise means to preserve 
them, in the reign of Edward III. (1473), in Queen Elizabeth’s time 
(1559-1603), under James VI. (1617), George III. (1760-1820), William 
IV., in 1837, notes a striking contrast between the dreadful state of 
neglect of the English archives and those of Scotland. The records of the 
Queen's Remembrancer, says he, it was discovered were stuffed into 600 
sacks in a most filthy state, and to disinter a document known to exist 
somewhere in these heaps, was a work of a most disgusting nature. The 
report of the committee of the House of Commons of 1836, gives the 
evidence of Mr. Henry Cole as to the state of the King’s mews containing 
these records. He says: “In these sheds 4,156 cubic feet of national 
records were deposited in the most neglected condition. Besides the 
accumulated dust of centuries, all, when those operations commenced, 
were found to be very damp. Some were in a state of inseparable 
adhesion to the stone walls. 
“There were numerous fragments which had only just escaped entire 
consumption by vermin and many were in the last stage of putrefaction. 
Decay and damp had rendered a large quantity so fragile as hardly to 
admit of being touched ; others, particularly those in the form of rolls, 
were so coagulated together that they could not be unrolled. Six or 
seven perfect skeletons of rats were found imbedded, and bones of these 
vermin were generally distributed throughout the mass ; and besides 
furnishing a charnel house for the dead, during the first removal of those 
