The Record Union

GIFT TO THE UNIVERSITY.

Huntington's Collection of Rare Books and Manuscripts.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 13.—The Library of the State University has just been enriched by a valuable and particularly appropriate gift. Collis P. Huntington is the donor, and has presented a collection of books and pamphlets relating to the history of California.

The Grannis collection of Spanish documents is included and comprises, it is believed, all such documents in existence outside the Bancroft collection.

In the collection made by Mr. Huntington there are 600 bound books and 3,300 pamphlets, besides many special editions of newspapers and about 12,000 pages of manuscript of an early date.

One of the most valuable manuscripts is the diary of Padre Pedro Font, one of the fathers who traveled from Old Mexico to San Francisco and back to Monterey in 1775-76.

There are English manuscripts written from 1824 to 1850, and there is a manuscript history of the Californias written by Henry W. Halleck, and covering the period from the discovery down to 1849.

A map of this region as it was then known and a "Memoire" of it published in Paris in 1705 are among the bound volumes, and there are Spanish histories of the new country which were published in Madrid and in Paris in 1757 and 1767.

There are many books published in California long ago, and these include "California as It Is in 1849," the first book published in the State.

The collection is valuable from the literary as well as the historical standpoint, and contains prose and verse, romance and description, signed by names almost forgotten already and undeservedly so.