Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/444

434 bridge and other Massachusetts affairs in the years 1773-1784. The Society draws, to its advantage, a considerable part of its lesser documents from the former District of Maine. Mr. Albert Matthews continues to illustrate the history of American expressions and their use from his exhaustless storehouse of quotations — in the present volume the locutions " statehouse ", " Joyce Junior ", " red man ", " Palatine ", and " park ".

Historic Towns of the Connecticut River Valley. By George S. Roberts. (Schenectady, Robson and Adee, 1906, pp. vii, 494.) The towns are taken up one by one, in an order extending from the mouth of the river northward. There is, however, little other order; repetitions are frequent, and in the selection of information to be included or excluded no clear purpose appears beyond that of furnishing entertaining reading-matter. There are good pictures.

With the assumption of the office of Archivist of the Dominion of Canada by Dr. Arthur G. Doughty a new era in the history of the  Canadian archives began. This will not be contested by any one who has read the preface to the Report concerning Canadian Archives for the year 1904 (Ottawa, King's Printer, 1905, pp. xliv, 395, 357). In the first place, an important administrative change has taken place, consequent upon an investigation by a commission appointed in 1898. An Order in Council of 1903, based on their report, fused the two offices of Archivist and Keeper of Records (the former hitherto under the Secretary of Agriculture, the latter under the Secretary of State), and placed under the new officer's control not only the copies from Europe and other papers collected by the industry of the late Dr. Brymner, but also all the older portions of the papers preserved in the various departments of the Dominion Government. A large and suitable archive-building has been erected, and provision has been made for bringing into it not only the historical material now in Ottawa but also much else that is in provincial repositories. Dr. Doughty's first report, besides giving a comprehensive survey of these transactions, outlines a plan of campaign on which the continuance of transcription in Europe may progress. The plans hitherto followed having led to much duplication, the printing of calendars in advance of the receipt of transcripts will be suspended, in the conviction that better calendars can be made after the materials obtained from Europe have been, for any given period, combined with those preserved in the Dominion. As a preliminary to a general guide to the materials for Canadian history, the archivist prints in this report an extensive account of the archives of Canada prepared in 1787. The volume also contains the full text of the instructions to the governors, 1763-1787, some papers relating to the war of 1775-1776, and a summary of documents in Paris, prepared by the late M. Édouard Richard, supplementary to his report printed in 1900, and provided with a welcome index. The Report concerning