Mr. Barlow now (1864) sumptuously printed the _Notes on Columbus_ in a volume (ninety-nine copies) for private distribution. For some reason not apparent, there were expressions in this admirable treatise which offended some; as when, for instance (p. vii), he spoke of being debarred the privileges of a much-vaunted public library, referring to the Astor Library. Similar inadvertences again brought him hostile criticism, when two years later (1866) he printed with considerable typographical luxury his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, which was published in New York. It embraces something over three hundred entries.[37] The work is not without errors; and Mr. Henry Stevens, who claims that he was wrongly accused in the book, gave it a bad name in the _London Athenæum_ of Oct. 6, 1866, where an unfortunate slip, in making “Ander Schiffahrt”[38] a personage, is unmercifully ridiculed. A committee of the Société de Géographie in Paris, of which M. Ernest Desjardins was spokesman, came to the rescue, and printed a _Rapport sur les deux ouvrages de bibliographie Américaine de M. Henri Harrisse_, Paris, 1867. In this document the claim is unguardedly made that Harrisse’s book was the earliest piece of solid erudition which America had produced,—a phrase qualified later as applying to works of American bibliography only. It was pointed out that while for the period of 1492-1551 Rich had given twenty titles, and Ternaux fifty-eight, Harrisse had enumerated three hundred and eight.[39] Harrisse prepared, while shut up in Paris during the siege of 1870, his _Notes sur la Nouvelle France_, a valuable bibliographical essay referred to elsewhere.[40] He later put in shape the material which he had gathered for a supplemental volume to his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, which he called _Additions_,[41] and published it in Paris in 1872. In his introduction to this latter volume he shows how thoroughly he has searched the libraries of Europe for new evidences of interest in America during the first half century after its discovery. He notes the depredations upon the older libraries which have been made in recent years, since the prices for rare Americana have ruled so high. He finds[42] that the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville, as compared with a catalogue of it made by Ferdinand Columbus himself, has suffered immense losses. “It is curious to notice,” he finally says, “how few of the original books relating to the early history of the New World can be found in the public libraries of Europe. There is not a literary institution, however rich and ancient, which in this respect could compare with three or four private libraries in America. The Marciana at Venice is probably the richest. The Trivulgiana at Milan can boast of several great rarities.”