Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/13

 work, and also some memoranda by a contemporary writer on Dr. Petty's method of work while engaged on the Survey. I have referred to this volume under the title of the 'Nelligan MS.'

My work has been greatly lightened by the use of a syllabus of the most important of the Petty MSS. at Bowood, made by my late uncle, the Earl of Kerry, who a short time before his death, as stated in 'Moore's Diary and Correspondence,' commenced collecting materials for a 'Life of Sir William Petty.' The Earl of Kerry had also collected some information from extraneous sources. In a few cases, when I have not been able to identify the origin of it, I have referred in the notes to the MS. he left.

I desire to acknowledge the obligations I owe to the notes of Sir Thomas Larcom in his edition of 'The History of the Down Survey,' and to the studies on the 'Irish Surveys' by Mr. W.H. Harding, published in the 'Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy,' vol. xxiv., parts i. and iii. (Antiquities); and to Mr. Prendergast's work 'On the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland' (Longmans, 1865).

The references to Röscher are to a study by that author on 'The English Political Economists of the 17th and 18th Centuries,' published in the 'Abhandlungen der philologisch-historischen Classe der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften,' vol. ii. (Leipzig, 1857), which is probably the most complete account of Petty's work as an economist which has yet been published. I am indebted to Mr. Madden, Sub-Librarian of the Bodleian Library, for the opportunity I have had of reading a very careful dissertation on Sir William