nearly 500 Dante items, comprised the nucleus of the Italian collection.
The Pèrcopo collection of 1,500 volumes, the private library of the late Professor Erasmo Pèrcopo, of the University of Naples, was purchased in 1928. It includes, besides many single publications, 278 volumes containing more than four thousand research articles and monographs, many of which are very rare or otherwise inaccessible in this country. The collection is now fully catalogued.
In 1932, Mrs. LeRoy Crummer presented to the University thirty-nine rare editions of Castiglione's Il Cortegiano. These, added to the ten already in the library, make this without a doubt one of the finest collections of its kind in the world. Probably the largest and most valuable library of Italian dialect dictionaries outside Italy is the special collection of 124 purchased in 1933.
THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
THOUGH the Department of Sociology of the University has been in existence only since 1931 the history of the teaching of the subject runs back into the last century. Three periods of its development are distinguishable preceding the establishment of an independent department.
The first period, 1881-94. — It may be assumed that during this period there was an interest in what later came to be called sociology because of the offering in three entirely separate departments of courses which touched upon sociological subjects. Of these, perhaps the most interesting from a historical standpoint is one entitled Social Science, which was given five times between 1881 and 1887 by Edward Swift Dunster (Harvard '56, M.D. New York College of Medicine '59), Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children. This course, which was in the School of Political Science (see Part IV: Department of Political Science) , was described in the University Calendar for 1881-82 (pp. 80-81) as follows:
Lectures on the following topics: 1. Introductory:
