printed, except the annual index for Part I, Group 2 (2,500 pages) containing the titles for pamphlets, dramas, motion pictures, maps, and contributions to periodicals, which is in the hands of the printer.

The current numbers of the different parts of the catalogue for the year 1927 have been printed with gratifying promptness. Special efforts are made to prepare the book titles as soon after receipt of the books as possible, and to print the lists every two or three days.

ACCESSIONS, PRINTED MATERIAL 1

(From the report of the retiring chief of the division of accessions, Mr. MARTIN A. ROBERTS)

Contents of the Library, June 30,

30, 1927.

Adopting the count of printed books and pamphlets made in June, 1902, as accurate, the total contents of the 1926, and June Library, inclusive of the law library, at the close of the past two fiscal years were as follows:

1 For manuscripts, maps, music, and prints, see under those headings, infra.

ACCESSIONS:

Books and

The accessions of books and pamphlets during the past

pamphlets, by two years, in detail, classified by source, were as follows:

sources.

Mrs. John Boyd

On February 18, 1927, died in Albany, N. Y., Mrs. BEQUEST: Emma Treadwell Thacher, widow of Hon. John Boyd Thacher. Thacher, bequeathing to the Library of Congress the extensive collections of books, autographs, manuscript documents, and other valuable articles collected by her husband and, after his death in 1909, intrusted by her to the custody of the Library of Congress at various dates (1910-1921) as deposits subject to her pleasure.

Brief notices of these deposits have appeared in the annual reports for 1910, 1915, and 1921. The several groups, now by her will permanently transferred, conservatively appraised at upwards of $350,000, include: (a) The John Boyd Thacher collection of incunabula, deposited in 1910. A catalogue1 of this was published by the Library in 1915. This collection of fifteenth century books is notable in point of size, in the number. of different presses represented, in the number of works not found in any other American collection, and in certain special rarities.

It numbers 840 different works in 929 volumes (duplicate copies included), works of 373 different authors (exclusive of 71 composite or anonymous books), written in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, English, German, Low German, and Hebrew.

The collector's aim was not the customary aim of collectors merely to assemble as many rarities as possible, but to gather notable specimens of the work of as many different fifteenth century presses as possible. In this he was remarkably successful. The collection contains specimens from over 500 different presses at work in 128 different cities and towns in Austria-Hungary, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, between the beginning of the year 1459 and the end of the year 1500.

The Bibliographical Society of America published in 1919 its "Census of fifteenth century books owned in America," the results of over 20 years of labor in investigating the resources of all known American collections,

1 Thacher, John Boyd. Catalogue of the John Boyd Thacher collection of incunabula. Comp. by Frederick W. Ashley, chief of the order division. Washington, Govt. print. off., 1915. 329 p. incl., illus., facsim. in colors. Front. (port.) 261⁄2 cm.

both public and private, containing one or more fifteentlı century books. The census, issued nine years after the publication of the catalogue of the Thacher collection, discloses the interesting fact that of the 840 Thacher incunabula, 230 were not known to the compilers of the census as existing in any other American collection either large or small. In the case of each of 192 other works only one other copy is listed in the census. Of the entire list of 840 titles, only 63 were already represented in the Library before the receipt of the Thacher collection.

Almost any product of a printing press of the fifteenth century can justifiably be termed rare, as now existing only in small numbers. The original editions were as a rule not large; the vicissitudes of four and a quarter centuries have probably swept away entire editions of works now unknown and have certainly spared but few survivors of the majority of these first fruits of the printer's art. The entire Thacher collection may well be termed a collection of rarities.

Its more special rarities include a fine copy of the Durandus of 1459-the most valuable item in the collection-printed on parchment in two volumes in the city of Mainz by Fust and Schöffer. This is the Ashburnham copy, earlier owned by the Duke of Sussex. (De Ricci. Catalogue raisonné des premières impressions de Mayence: 65: nos. 43 and 61.)

Another notable item is the Bohemian Bible, printed in 1489 in Kuttenberg, near Prague, the only known product of the press of Martin of Tischniowa.

Specially rare also is the Breviarium Moguntinense, printed in 1474 by the "Brothers of the Common Life," in one of their monasteries in Marienthal on the Rhine opposite the city of Mainz. This order had been used to train its members in fine penwork. When printing made hand copying unprofitable, several of its houses took up the new art-in Brussels, in Rostock, and elsewhere. The Thacher copy of this breviary is apparently the only one in America.

There is also a rare German version of the Golden legend, by Jacobus de Voragine (Leben der Heiligenthe Winterteil only) printed in Augsburg by Johann

Schönsperger in 1487, one of the two known copies, the other being in Copenhagen. Thacher has also a Low German version of this (Dat duytsche Passionael) in two volumes complete, printed in Cologne in 1485.

Another product of the cloister is the Novum psalterium beatæ Mariae Virginis, the only known issue of the press of the Cistercian Monastery in Zinna, Germany, printed before the year 1497. There is another copy in the J. Pierpont Morgan collection in New York. Unique in America also is Vocabularius ex quo, 1477, printed in Eltvil by Nicolaus Bechtermünze, the fourth edition, printed from the type of Peter Drach of Speier. These are the items deemed rarest by connoisseurs of incunabula. The list could easily be greatly expanded by the inclusion of other notable editions almost as rare.

(b) A group of books relating to Christopher Columbus, and to other early American discovery, assembled by Mr. Thacher in preparing for his monumental life of Columbus and his "Continent of America."

Briefly to indicate the value of this group mention is made of three very rare editions of Martin Waldseemüller's Cosmographiae introductio, in which the name America first appears. (St. Die, vii Kl. Maii, 1507; St. Die, iiii Kl. Sept., 1507; Strassburg, 1509.)

Monardes, Nicolas. Dos libros, el vno que trata de todas las cosas que traen de nuestras Indias occidentales, que sirven al vɛo de la medicina. Sevilla, Diaz, 1569. Segunde parte. Sevilla, Alonzo Escrivano, 1571.

Peter Martyr. De orbe novo decades III. Alcala, 1516. There are also later editions and other versions of this.

In this group also belongs the remarkable collection of 34 editions of Ptolemy's geography noted elsewhere in this report (see under Map division). There are also early editions of Ortelius and Mercator.

Hakluyt, Simon Grynaeus, Oviedo y Valdes, Hennepin, Petrus Apianus, Fernando Colon, Agostino Giustiniani, Emanuel van Meteren, Bartolomé de las Casas, De Bry, Benedetto, Bordone and others are represented by early editions.