Whereas the President of the United States in a proclamation dated April 9, 1910 (36 Stat. L. 2685), proclaimed that subjects of the Netherlands since July 1, 1909, have been entitled to all the benefits of the copyright act approved March 4, 1909, other than the benefits under section 1 (e) thereof; and, Whereas the Government of the Netherlands declared on October 2, 1922, that under the laws in force in that country "citizens of the United States may claim copyright in the Netherlands and possessions with respect to their musical works made or published for the first time since the date of this declaration, which copyright includes the exclusive right to manufacture rolls, discs, and other objects for the mechanical reproduction of a work in whole or in part, as well as the exclusive right to give public representations or executions by means of these instruments, and this independently of the fact that these instruments have been made either in the Netherlands and possessions or in the United States of America or elsewhere"; Now, therefore, I, Warren G. Harding, President of the United States of America, do declare and proclaim that one of the alternative conditions specified in sections 1 (e) and 8 (b) of the act of March 4, 1909, was fulfilled in respect to the subjects of the Netherlands on October 2, 1922, and that the subjects of the Netherlands from and after that date shall be entitled to all the benefits of the said act, including copyright controlling the parts of instruments serving to reproduce mechanically a musical work, as provided in section 1 (e) of the said act, in the case of all works by the Netherlands authors which have been published on or after October 2, 1922, and have obtained copyright in accordance with the laws of the United States. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington this twenty-sixth day of February, in the year of our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three, and of the Independence of [SEAL.] the United States of America the one hundred and forty-seventh. By the President: CHARLES E. HUGHES, WARREN G. HARDING. Secretary of State. APPENDIX III. ORIENTALIA: ACQUISITIONS. By Walter T. Swingle, Chairman Library Committee, United States Chinese books as usual exceeded by far other East Asiatic accessions. They total 444 works in 3,626 volumes. The Chinese accessions represent an increase of about 5 per cent in the number of works and also of about 5 per cent in the number of volumes. The Japanese accessions number about 21 works in 90 volumes. No Korean or Annamite books were received during the past year. Good progress was made in securing official gazetteers, some 134 in all being added to the already very large collection in this field. Of these 2 were provincial, 24 were prefectural, and 105 district gazetteers. In addition I duplicate prefectural and 2 duplicate district gazetteers were received. The Chinese collections now contains 1,296 gazetteers, as well as 104 duplicate copies. The most interesting acquisition in this field is of two editions of the Hupeh provincial gazetteer, the Hupeh t'ung chih, for some years the only one lacking from the Library of Congress set of provincial gazetteers. For five years past active efforts have been made to secure this gazetteer: in 1918 several booksellers promised to get a copy but none was delivered; finally, in 1921, a new edition of the Hupeh gazetteer was issued, and not only was this secured but also a copy of the old edition published in 1803, now very rare. The old edition is in 100 books and the new in 172. The latter is thoroughly revised and brought up to date; it is in fact the latest provincial gazetteer. The Province of Szechwan leads in the number of gazetteers added, 21 having been secured during the past year. Shensi Province comes next with 13 gazetteers. Through the good offices of Dr. U. Y. Yen, director of the educational bureau of the Chinese Ministry of Education Chinese Official Gazetteers. An early Gazet teer preserved in tien. in Washington, D. C., the Library has received from the commissioner of education of Yunnan Province seven official gazetteers of that Province, hitherto the most poorly represented in the Library's collection of gazetteers. Thanks to this gift of the provincial authorities the number of prefectural gazetteers for Yunnan Province has been increased from three to six. In addition to the gazetteers, some 15 sets of periodicals were donated by the publishers and sent to the Library along with them. Doctor Yen has expressed the confident hope that the educational commissioners of the other Chinese provinces will be glad to follow the example of their colleague of Yunnan and send to the Library the gazetteers of their respective provinces still missing in Washington. As the official gazetteers in the Library form the largest collection in any library outside of China, it is not unreasonable to hope that with the active cooperation and help of the provincial officials the Library's set may soon be equal to any single collection in China itself. An item of very unusual interest in the class of official the Yung Lo to gazetteers is found in one of the volumes of the Yung Lo ta tien acquired in the spring of 1923, of which an extended notice is given further on in this report. Books 10949 and 10950 of this work contain a gazetteer of Fuchow Fu, Kiangsi Province, and its five dependent districts, with 7 maps. It occupies 43 large folios and is extracted largely from an ancient gazetteer now lost, of the prefecture, the Fu chou chih, which must have been published before 1403– 1409, when the Yung Lo ta tien was compiled. There are two short extracts from the Yüan i t'ung chih, the first and in many ways the best general gazetteer of China (published by order of the Mongol Emperor very early in the fourteenth century and unfortunately now almost entirely lost). Even these short extracts of only some half a hundred words are of interest. Five other works besides the two just named are quoted; one of them, the Chün hsien chih, a district gazetteer doubtless lost by now. It seems to be almost impossible to secure official gazetteers printed during the Sung and Yüan dynasties or during teers. even the early part of the Ming dynasty. For this reason the fragments in the Yung Lo ta tien are of great value. Among the unofficial geographical works, Si hu chih lei, Unofficial gazel ch'ao, in four books by Yu Ssu-ch'ung, a Ming edition with beautiful illustrations descriptive of the famous West Lake near Hangchow, is of interest because of the rarity of Ming geographical works. Another interesting Ming geographical work is the San shan chih hsüan pu, in 20 books, selected and compiled by Chen Ming-ching, a famous Ming scholar and editor. This work is bound in 48 volumes. It is a collection of selected essays, poems, songs, and prose writings on three mountains, namely, Peh-k'u shan, Ch'ing-shan, and Chiao-shan, which are situated in Kiangsu Province. As has been noted in the last three annual reports, the Library of Congress has several editions of a very remarkable collection of works on the mountains of China, Ming shan chi, one of them surely a Ming edition, and one probably a late Ming edition. The San shan chih hsüan pu, although of very much more limited scope, serves to strengthen an already noteworthy collection of the early writings of the Chinese on mountains, a subject that has appealed strongly to their imagination. Another Ming geographical work of unusual interest received during the past year is the Chiang han ti fang t'u k'ao, in three books, by Shih Tu-ch'ên, with a preface by the author, dated Lung Ching 2 (1568 A. D.). This is an engineering study of the means of preventing floods on the Yangtse, Han and Chin Kiang Rivers, and is illustrated with a large number of maps showing the courses of the three rivers and the villages and towns liable to be inundated in time of flood. It is a fine Ming edition, clearly printed with large characters, and is bound in three volumes. A number of other Ming geographical works were received during the past year, but they have not yet been carefully studied. A number of Ming dynasty historical records also were secured, some of them doubtless containing information of a geographical nature. Geographical works published during the Ming dynasty are extremely rare, and often very interesting, because of the record they give of the advent Chinese collectanea, ts'ung shu. Completion of Chinese ts'ung of the Europeans by the sea route and the steady encroachments from the north by the Manchus. In the last annual report of the librarian a full account was given of the great collection of ts'ung shu, or collections of reprints (believed to be the largest and the best indexed of any to be found outside of China) that has been built up in the Library. It was there reported that the Library then contained over 350 ts'ung shu, excluding a large number of literary collections usually classed as ts'ung shu by Chinese bibliographers. During the year nineteen of the new ts'ung shu and 16 already in the Library were completely indexed. These 35 contain 1,615 works which, with the 16,922 works in the 328 ts'ung shu indexed up to the time of last year's report, make a total of 18,537 works in the 363 fully indexed ts'ung shu in the Library. As noted last year, the works in two different editions of the same ts'ung shu are counted twice, and there is moreover some duplication because of the fact that important works are included in different ts'ung shu. Cards are available for all of these 18,537 works. For the present they are arranged by the first character of the title according to the number of strokes it contains. This permits the very prompt finding of any work contained in any of the fully indexed ts'ung shu in the Library. The outstanding acquisition in this class of works is the largest and finest sixth and last part of the monumental ts'ung shu, Ssu pu shu ever printed. ts'ung k'an, noticed briefly in the last two annual reports. This great collection of reprints is without doubt not only the largest general ts'ung shu (i. e., exclusive of the Buddhistic and the Taoist canons) that has ever been issued in China but contains the largest proportion of rare and valuable works. The Ssu pu ts'ung k'an, excluding the 24 histories issued independently, includes 323 works in 8,548 books, bound in 2,100 volumes. All of these works are reproduced in photolithographic facsimile from rare old manuscripts or editions, reduced to a uniform size about one-half the original. Of the 323 works reproduced in this ts'ung shu, no fewer than 56, or more than one-sixth, are from books printed during the Sung and Yüan dynasties be |