36                     Notable Purchases, ip;8-ic/^$

(London, 1629); Pindarus (Oxford, 1698); and Sappho (Lon¬
don, 1733).

Only sixteen items were purchased for the David Eugene Smith
Collection on the history of mathematics, in addition to the Wil-
ford manuscript mentioned above. Of these the most distinguished
were the Frankfort (1610) edition of Tycho Brahe's Astrono¬
miae instauratae progynmasmata, and the very rare work on mod¬
ern rockets, Robert Esnault-Pelterie's L'Exploration par fusees de
la tres haute atmosphere et la possibilite des voyages interplane-
fijirej, Paris, 1928 (presentation copy).

Mention should be made of the acquLsition of the scarce first
edition (signed) of Frank Norris' Yvernelle, Philadelphia, 1892;
of the first edition (Amsterdam 1782) of de Laclos' Les Liaisons
Dangereuses; of Joaquin Miller's scarce Pacific Poems, London,
1871; and of the extremely rare broadside showing of Sequoyah's
Cherokee alphabet (1833).

All of the items so fat mentioned have found their way into Spe¬
cial Collections, Columbia's principal rare-book and manuscript
library. Similar rarities have of course been added to the Avery,
Law, and Medical collections, but these have been fewer in num¬
ber for the very obvious reason that the first responsibility of
those collections has been-and continues to be-the support of
courses of study and research in current problems; accordingly
there has been by the very nature of things less emphasis on acquir¬
ing historical rarities. However, the East Asiatic Librarian, Mr.
Howard Linton, reports that during the past year the Japanese
collection has been strengthened in several fields through the
efforts of Professor Donald Keene during his trips to Japan in the
summers of 1958 and 1959. Particularly numerous are works on
literature, and the Library's collection on theater and drama is
now considered among the finest and strongest in this country.
Professor Keene also filled all gaps in the Library's holdings of
2,en'ei, the official organ of the Japan Communist Party. As for
the Chinese collection, outstanding purchases include the inipor-