ACKNOWLEDGMENTS                                xxxv

Mr. Fridenberg's comprehensive card catalogue of New York prints,
generously placed at my disposal, has proved very helpful, especially in
connection with the supplementary list of prints.

To all of these, and to my secretary. Miss Zula Ziebach, and to Mr.
Thomas W. Hotchkiss, both of whom have been associated long and in¬
timately with the work, and whose zeal and devotion have been unflag¬
ging, as well as to Mr. Rawson W. Haddon and to the several others who
at one time or another have laboured patiently at the common task, and
have given cheerfully of their time and energy, I cannot easily express all
that I feel of appreciation and gratitude. The completed work, such
as it is, is theirs quite as much as mine, and there is satisfaction in the
thought that we have shared alike in the toils and pleasures of its produc¬
tion. Mistakes have been made, no doubt—sins of omission as well as
of commission—and I am painfully conscious of many shortcomings,
both in matter and in form. The field to be covered is so wide, and the
work of investigation has necessarily been^ divided among so many, that
some contradictions, and numerous inconsistencies in form, have been
unavoidable, and I trust these will be forgiven.

A few conspicuous contradictions between the Summary of the Dutch
Period and the Cartography, Plate Descriptions, and Chronology, repre¬
sent divergent interpretations of the usually meagre facts, made on the
one hand by Mr. Paltsits, and on the other by the author who, while
exercising an editorial supervision over the whole work, has preferred to
allow such inconsistencies to remain rather than arbitrarily to unify state¬
ments of fact or theory in accordance with his own judgment.

The typography and make-up of the book are the work of Mr.
Walter Gilliss, whose broad experience and wise judgment have been of
the greatest value, and who has spared neither time nor pains to make
it a worthy example of modern book-making. Most of the head-bands
and tail-pieces were engraved, with rare skill, by Mr. Sidney L. Smith,
from designs composed by the author.

These acknowledgments would be incomplete, indeed, without at
least a word of grateful appreciation for what has been accomplished
by the present administration towards the better housing and classification
of the city's archives, especially in the Register's and Comptroller's offices
and in the Department of Public Works; but, so far, only a beginning
has been made, and there remains a vast amount still to be done before