In An earlier issue of the Bulletin there was a description of an incunabulum printed at Venice in 1494, the first historical treatise on accountancy. Two months ago the Society acquired a volume which goes back even further into the cradle days of printing. It is a very early book on commerce. It was presented to the Society by Mr. Joseph P. Day in coöperation with officers of the Society.

One of the primary purposes of the founders of The Business Historical Society was to effect the preservation of valuable historical documents and records which, for one reason or another, are so often destroyed by their owners. Not always, however, is the Society able to do so.

An amusing and at the same time heartbreaking instance came to its attention recently where an old Maine farmhouse had been subjected to a housecleaning, and where the owners reported they had found many letters signed by Abraham Lincoln. Supposing that the signatures might be of value, they clipped out all the signatures and burned the letters.

We are indebted to Mr. E. A. S. Clarke, Secretary of the American Iron and Steel Institute, for calling our attention to an article in the 1901 Transactions of the British Institute which places the oldest joint-stock enterprise in the world at Domnarfvet, Sweden. It is the Stora Kopparbergs (Great Copper Mountain) Mining Company, deriving its name from the celebrated copper mine at Falun, where one of its plants is located.

A Short time ago the Society came into possession of what is probably a unique collection. It is a potpourri from the history of transportation, fourteen bound volumes, and nearly twice as much loose material in boxes and folders — newspaper clippings, some of them dating back to the beginning of the last century, on turnpikes, canals, stages, taverns, railroads, steamboats, ferries, ships and shipbuilding, coal, express-riders, and every subject which could conceivably have had anything to do with transportation, including the ubiquitous lottery.

Last March, Mr. Franklin E. Parker, Jr., published in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine an article on the association organized for the aid and support of the Harvard College Library. In this article, the needs of a large and progressive library, and the ways in which the public can help to fill those needs, are so well presented that The Business Historical Society has obtained permission to reprint some extracts from it.