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America7i Histo7-ical Association 493 the courses are open, subject to certain restrictions. Professor Burr of Cornell said that, other things being equal, he believed the chron- ological order to be the sensible one, and that at Cornell it is made the possible one. This point was emphasized by Professor C. H. Haskins, who stated that at Harvard the students, left free in their choice of studies, ordinarily and naturally follow a chronolog- ical order if given a fair chance. Professor Theodore C. Smith of Williams made a plea for the needs of the college as distinguished from the university in the teaching of history, while Professor Her- bert D. Foster gave an account of co-operative teaching at Dart- mouth, and Professor Albert B. White of the University of Minne- sota stated that at that institution it was insisted upon that a student should have taken a course in English history before entering upon the study of American history. The conference on the problems of state and local historical societies was presided over by Professor Benjamin F. Shambaugh, of the State University of Iowa. Two ' subjects were discussed, " Problems relative to the care and preservation of public archives ", and " The marking of historical sites ". Professor Herman V. Ames of the University of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Associa- tion's Public Archives Commission, was the first speaker and pre- sented a review of the work of that commission during the seven years of its existence. The purpose of the Commission has been two-fold, to contribute information, in the form of printed reports, relative to the historical material in public archives, and to stimu- late state and local governments to the proper care of such material. Forty reports, of which thirty-one have been published, have been prepared on the archives of twenty-nine states. It has been shown that hardly one of the older states has preserved complete files of its records, although the eastern states are better off in this respect than most of the others. There is however a very encourag- ing movement in those states where the need is greatest, for the proper care of public records. In Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Iowa, the state archives are being provided for in accordance with recent legislation. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut attention has been directed to the care of local archives. Professor Ames concluded his report with mentioning two additional activities undertaken by the Commission : the selection by a sub-committee of the ma- terial in the British archives to be transcribed for the Library of Congress, and the preparation of a bibliography of the official pub-