BIRD S. COLER, Comptroller of the City of New York, ex officio. OFFICERS President, Hon. JOHN BIGELOW. First Vice-President, Rt. Rev. HENRY C. POTTER, D.D. Second Vice-President, JOHN S. KENNEDY, Esq. Secretary, GEORGE L. RIVES, Esq., 32 Nassau Street. Treasurer, EDWARD KING, Esq., Union Trust Company, 80 Broadway. Director, JOHN S. BILLINGS, LL.D., 40 Lafayette Place. ΤΗ REGULATIONS HE Astor Building, 40 Lafayette Place, and the Lenox Building, Fifth Avenue and 70th Street, are open daily, excepting on Sundays, Independence Day, Christmas, and New Year, from 9 A. M. until 6 P. M. The Reading rooms and the Exhibition rooms are free to all persons; but children under the age of fifteen years must be accompanied by an adult. In the Reading room of each Library Building certain shelves are set apart for books of reference, which readers are allowed to take down and examine at their pleasure. For all other books an application must be made by filling out and signing one of the blanks provided for the purpose. Published monthly by The New York Public Library, No. 40 Lafayette Place, New York City Subscription One Dollar a year, single numbers Ten Cents. Subscriptions may be sent to I. Ferris Lockwood, Business Superintendent, No. 40 Lafayette Place, New York. Entered as second-class matter at the New York, N. Y., Post Office, January 30, 1897 During the month of March, there were received at the Library by purchase 798 books and 490 pamphlets, and by gift 6,695 volumes and 4,644 pamphlets. There were catalogued 5,933 volumes and 1,909 pamphlets, for which purpose 23, 126 cards and 2,963 slips for the printer were written. The following table shows the number of readers, and the number of volumes consulted, in both the Astor and Lenox Branches of the Library, during the month: Among the important gifts of the month were the following-Major S. T. Armstrong, 176 volumes, 559 pamphlets, 215 newspapers and 13 maps. Among these were 30 volumes of the Boletin oficiel de la Provincia de Puerto Principe, 1885-1898, annual reports of the various provinces of Cuba, a copy of the colonial constitution of Cuba and Porto Rico, accompanied by the laws of the autonomous regimen relating to imports and exports, and a large number of acts, orders, proclamations, Chinese cooley contracts in manuscript, and also a rare directory of Havana for 1859; from S. P. Avery, 41 volumes and 7 pamphlets; from John Bigelow, 299 miscellaneous documents and 1,200 pamphlets; from the Century Association 1,090 volumes and 880 newspapers; from the Military Governor of Cuba, 38 General orders; from Mrs. Henry Draper, 4 volumes of Hungarian music; from Alexander Maitland, 13 volumes and 61 pamphlets; from the Rev. F. H. Marling, 74 volumes and 20 pamphlets, all relating to the Presbyterian Church; from the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs, 11 volumes and 4 pamphlets; from the Military Governor of Porto Rico, 182 General Orders; from M. Taylor Pyne, a copy of the Sesquicentennial of Princeton; and from the Venezuelan Legation, 14 volumes and 8 pamphlets, relating to the Boundary question. The Board of Estimate and Apportionment of the City of New York has authorized the issue of bonds to the amount of $500,000 to be used in removing the 42nd Street reservoir and in laying the foundations for the new building for the New York Public Library, and this action has been approved by the Board of Aldermen. The plans and specifications for this part of the work have been approved by the municipal authorities and the Park Departmentis now advertising for bids for the work. VIRGINIA PAPERS, 1616-1619. The following documents are printed from the papers collected by John Smyth, one of the early colonizers of Virginia. He was educated at Oxford and at the Middle Temple, then became steward to his friend Lord Berkeley, and later retired to his estate at North Nibley, four miles from Berkeley. In 1618 he entered into a partnership with Sir William Throckmorton, Sir George Yardley, Richard Berkeley, and George Thorpe, for a plantation in Virginia. A calendar of this collection of papers was printed in the Bulletin for July, 1897, and two selections from the papers have been printed before in the issue for March, 1897. The arrangement here is chronological. BRYAN CAVE TO GEORGE THORPE. Salutem in Christo. S vnderstanding by our governour that you haue beene by some discouraged as touching your shaire, insomuch that when you came into the court to tender your monny for the supplying of the sayd shaire you were informed that your land was nothing woorth, but full of rocks, whervppon you reserued your monney telling them that when you were informed the truth thereof you would supply it accordingly till when you would make stay of your supply. wherfore that lying next vnto mr webbs shaires whose land I mannage, on v acres wherof of I haue taken some paines, supposing the first deuision should stand, I haue thought it fitting and expedient to make you acquainted of the truth therof; and as concearning the same I assure you that as the olde subdeuision stood your ground was little woorth, in regard your land was soe narrow that there could bee noe fenses left, but as our new subdeuision now stands which must continue being that all your ground lyeth together your shaire is as good as any one in all the trybe both for ground, timber, and fresh water and fishing, and as conveniently it lyeth: wherefore I would not haue you to bee discouraged a whitt touching the same: for though the ill |