There is in the city of Danzig on the Baltic Sea a medieval painting which is of unusual interest in the history of business. It is an altarpiece, the “Last Judgment” by Hans Memling, the inimitable fifteenth-century artist of the Low Countries. Besides being a great work of art, this picture is in a sense an important business record. It is, moreover, in a real way a product of business; its origin was intimately tied in with international mercantile activity in the fifteenth century. War prevented the “Last Judgment” from occupying the place for which it was intended, and wars have continued to give it an insecure existence. The present conflict in Europe may result in another removal, possibly back to Bruges, the place of the activity of those medieval business men whom it is said to commemorate.

At the end of the selections from Mellon's autobiography published in the December issue of the Bulletin, the author, having put his new banking house in order, was off on a trip to New Orleans. The present Bulletin carries his narrative forward from the time of his return until 1884, when his autobiography ends.

The general thread of interest which runs through the story of business experience from 1872 to 1884 is that of panic, liquidation, and recovery. The author gives an unusually good account of what happened during the panic, and he also tries to explain the coming of the panic of 1873 and the severe liquidation which followed.

How many readers of the BULLETIN have seen or known about the Adam Smith Collection at the Baker Library of Harvard University? The Collection was presented to the Library by Dean Homer Vanderblue of the School of Commerce, Northwestern University, who was at one time a member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School.

There has recently come to the editor's desk a copy of a booklet entitled Historical Societies in the United States and Canada: a Handbook. This booklet lists 1,467 historical organizations in the two countries, most of which are small local societies. For each of some 900 of these, the booklet gives the officers, the number of members, the annual income, a brief statement of the contents of the society's library or museum, and its publications.

The attention of the readers of the BULLETIN is called to a new volume (V) in the series, A History of American Life. The book is The Completion of Independence, 1790-1830 by Professor John Allen Krout of Columbia University and President Dixon Ryan Fox of Union College. The series is a social history. The recent book gives a very readable and effective account of various aspects of American development at the beginning of the period of great expansion and change in the nineteenth century. It is notable because of the way it treats the history of business.