The library formed by the late Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn to assist him in his projected history of maritime discovery in America, of which only the chapter on Verrazano[67] has been printed, was the creation of diligent search for many years, part of which was spent in Holland as minister of the United States. The earliest record of it is a _Catalogue of an American library chronologically arranged_, which was privately printed in a few copies, about 1850, and showed five hundred and eighty-nine entries between the years 1480 and 1800.[68] [Illustration: JAMES CARSON BREVOORT.] There has been no catalogue printed of the library of Mr. James Carson Brevoort, so well known as a historical student and bibliographer, to whom Mr. Sabin dedicated the first volume of his _Dictionary_. Some of the choicer portions of his collection are understood to have become a part of the Astor Library, of which Mr. Brevoort was for a few years the superintendent, as well as a trustee.[69] The useful and choice collection of Mr. Charles Deane, of Cambridge, Mass., to which, as the reader will discover, the Editor has often had recourse, has never been catalogued. Mr. Deane has made excellent use of it, as his tracts and papers abundantly show.[70] * * * * * A distinct class of helpers in the field of American bibliography has been those gatherers of libraries who are included under the somewhat indefinite term of collectors,—owners of books, but who make no considerable dependence upon them for studies which lead to publication. From such, however, in some instances, bibliography has notably gained,—as in the careful knowledge which Mr. James Lenox sometimes dispensed to scholars either in privately printed issues or in the pages of periodicals. [Illustration: CHARLES DEANE.] Harrisse in 1866 pointed to five Americana libraries in the United States as surpassing all of their kind in Europe,—the Carter-Brown, Barlow, Force, Murphy, and Lenox collections. Of the Barlow, Force (now in the Library of Congress), and Murphy collections mention has already been made. The Lenox Library is no longer private, having been given to a board of trustees by Mr. Lenox previous to his death,[71] and handsomely housed, by whom it is held for a restricted public use, when fully catalogued and arranged. Its character, as containing only rare or unusual books, will necessarily withdraw it from the use of all but scholars engaged in recondite studies. It is very rich in other directions than American history; but in this department the partial access which Harrisse had to it while in Mr. Lenox’s house led him to infer that it would hold the first rank. The wealth of its alcoves, with their twenty-eight thousand volumes, is becoming known gradually in a series of bibliographical monographs, printed as contributions to its catalogue, of which six have thus far appeared, some of them clearly and mainly the work of Mr. Lenox himself.