14 THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 



scientific in the main, although still embracing the current 

 record of the doings, the meetings and the necrology of 

 the society. 



In April, 1859, a new publication, devoted to histori- 

 cal matter, was begun, which has now reached a total of 

 thirty completed volumes. It has been sustained without 

 a break. The spirit in which it was conceived and carried 

 on appears from the introductory notes which preface 

 each of the first eight volumes. 



At first such material as came to hand and seemed 

 worthy of perpetuation in type — historical sketches, 

 copies of records, and essays in antiquarian research — 

 was printed, by a mutually convenient plan, in the col- 

 umns of the Salem Gazette, and before distribution of the 

 type, a limited number of extra copies were run off, 

 paged up in a form to be bound into a periodical volume, 

 and hence the double columns and peculiar shape of the 

 page in the first eight volumes of our Historical Collec- 

 tions. But in 186y, not without a good many pangs 

 amongst the more conservative of us, it was decided that 

 these swaddling clothes had been outgrown, and our pub- 

 lications took on the decorous and customary form of the 

 regulation octavo page. 



During this series of forty years the Institute has print- 

 ed and put on record very little matter which has not 

 suflicient interest and value to warrant its preservation. 

 Some of the articles in this long series have possessed an 

 exceptional importance and a literary quality which has 

 been recognized by the public. Some have been the work 

 of persons of established literary, scientific and genealog- 

 ical repute. On the whole it is not presumptuous, perhaps, 

 to claim that our publications, as compared with others 

 of their class, contain a fair share of matter which would 

 be accepted as of value in the current issues of the press. 



