62 



ments, — some bearing date as far back iis lG7o. Among tlicm, 

 were letters of Governor Joseph Dudley ; Lieutenant Governor 

 William Stougbton s commission to Captain William Picker- 

 ing. This William Stougbton ^vill be remembered as one of 

 the Justices at the trial of the witches in 1G92. Letters of 

 Governor Belcher ; Deed, signed by John Massey,— said by 

 some to have been the first child born in Salem ; Papers signed 

 by Bartholomew Gedney (a witch justice,) and by Stephen 

 Sewall, who was clerk of the court at the trial of the witches ; 

 sundry bills and receipts, from 1680 to 1750, &c. &c. 



Mr. Brooks proposed an efficient plan to render these crumb- 

 ling and precious documents of use, and intended to form as 

 perfect series as possible, chronologically arranged, that they 

 may be bound up into strong and durable, covered volumes. 

 He earnestly recommended a search to be instituted among the 

 garrets and musty repositories of old affairs of this nature, that 

 relics so sacred and fast becoming evanesent by the tooth of 

 time may be snatched from oblivion or ruin. Mr. B. also alluded 

 to the munificent and unique present by a Mr. Halliwell, of 

 London, to the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington, D. C, 

 of fifty folio volumes of papers, dated from 1632 to 1790, 

 arranged somewhat after the same plan now proposed. 



Remarks from the President and from other members of the 

 Institute were made on the importance of thus preserving these 

 old papers, and on their increasing value in a Historical point 

 of view, illustrating as they did the manners and customs of the 

 times, and seconded Mr Brooks' expressed wish of a co-opera- 

 tion to perfect his plans. 



Dr. Henry Wheatland exhibited to the meeting a skull of 

 the Walrns in a fine state of preservation, and occupied the 

 remainder of the evening by a series of remarks, suggested by 

 the specimen, which had been added to the Cabinets. 



Premising bis particular observations on this specimen, Dr. 

 W. alluded to the structure of the head or skull of the verte- 



