Sabin[4] refers to Cornelius van Beughem’s _Bibliographia Historica_, 1685, published at Amsterdam, as having the titles of books on America. The earliest exclusively American catalogue is the _Bibliothecæ Americanæ Primordia_ of White Kennett,[5] Bishop of Peterborough, published in London in 1713. The arrangement of its sixteen hundred entries is chronological; and it enters under their respective dates the sections of such collections as Hakluyt and Ramusio.[6] It particularly pertains to the English colonies, and more especially to New England, where, in the eighteenth century, three distinctively valuable American libraries are known to have existed,—that of the Mather family, which was in large part destroyed during the battle of Bunker Hill, in 1775; that of Thomas Prince, still in large part existing in the Boston Public Library; and that of Governor Hutchinson, scattered by the mob which attacked his house in Boston in 1765.[7] In 1716 Lenglet du Fresnoy inserted a brief list (sixty titles) in his _Méthode pour étudier la géographie_. Garcia’s _Origen de los Indias de el nuevo mundo_, Madrid, 1729, shows a list of about seventeen hundred authors.[8] In 1737-1738 Barcia enlarged Pinelo’s work, translating all his titles into Spanish, and added numerous other entries which Rich[9] says were “clumsily thrown together.” Charlevoix prefixed to his _Nouvelle France_, in 1744, a list with useful comments, which the English reader can readily approach in Dr. Shea’s translation. A price-list which has been preserved of the sale in Paris in 1764, _Catalogue des livres des ci-devant soi-disans Jésuites du Collége de Clermont_, indicates the lack of competition at that time for those choicer Americana, now so costly.[10] The _Regio patronatu Indiarum_ of Frassus (1775) gives about 1505 authorities. There is a chronological catalogue of books issued in the American colonies previous to 1775, prepared by S. F. Haven, Jr., and appended to the edition of Thomas’s _History of Printing_, published by the American Antiquarian Society. Though by no means perfect, it is a convenient key to most publications illustrative of American history during the colonial period of the English possessions, and printed in America. Dr. Robertson’s _America_ (1777) shows only 250 works, and it indicates how far short he was of the present advantages in the study of this subject. Clavigero surpassed all his predecessors in the lists accompanying his _Storia del Messico_, published in 1780,—but the special bibliography of Mexico is examined elsewhere. Equally special, and confined to the English colonies, is the documentary register which Jefferson inserted in his _Notes on Virginia_; but it serves to show how scanty the records were a hundred years ago compared with the calendars of such material now. Meuzel, in 1782, had published enough of his _Bibliotheca Historica_ to cover the American field, though he never completed the work as planned.