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BIBLIOGRAPHIE COLONIALE
dealt with in the same way. Series C. 0. 326 contains Registers and Indexes of Colonial Correspondence from 1635 to 1837 and is of use in connection with all the foregoing series. It must not be assumed that the papers in the Public Record Office contain the whole of the extant official material relating to the dealings of the central government with the colonies especially in the 18th century. The Secretaries of State on retirment from office frequently carried away with them many of the documents that had come to them in their official capacity. Thus the Duke of Newcastle during his long tenure of the Secretaryship of State in the first half of the 18th century accumulated an immense mass of papers, and these are of much greater importance than those remaining for the period among the State Papers. Luckily the papers have come back into public custody by acquisition from his descendants and they are now to be found among the Additional Manuscripts in the British Museum. The papers of the Earl of Shelburne (later first Marquess of Lansdowne) whose work was of great importance to the colonies between 1763 and 1783 remained in the possession of his family until a few years ago when they were purchased for the Clements Library at Ann Arbor, Michigan, U. S. A. where they are now deposited. A more unfortunate fate befel the papers of Henry Dundas (later 1st. Viscount Melville). That exceedingly important collection for the period of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars has been regrettably dispersed by sale in recent years and though scattered items in it may be recovered, they have been divorced from their surroundings and thus have lost much of their historical value. For those who are interested in the subject reference should be made to the volumes of the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research where some attempts have been made to note the wanderings of the papers. The most important way of finding access to the colonial papers of the past in private collections is by means of the Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission which has been at work in calendaring such collections since 1870. There