Records which, by virtue of their provenance and date, would normally be included in this series are found in other archival fonds. For practical reasons relating to the arrangement of such records by the custodians who inherited them after 1791, they cannot now be included within the present fonds and series. A number of records currently described in RG 4 (Records of the Civil and Provincial Secretaries, Quebec, Lower Canada and Canada East), series A1, vols. 1-52, date from the Province of Quebec period and are documents which the Councils would have created and/or accumulated. As explained in the 1953 published inventory (Public Archives of Canada - Manuscript Division - Preliminary Inventory - Record Group 1, Executive Council, Canada, 1764-1867 ), the Council records included in those volumes were already inter-mingled at the time of acquisition by the National Archives with records of the Civil and Provincial Secretaries for Lower Canada. This inter-mingling is attributed in the 1953 inventory to the fact that for many years the offices of Clerk of Council and Civil Secretary were held in plurality by one individual who, apparently, did not keep the records separate, although there is reason to believe that the inter-mingling is attributable to interference with the records by a later custodian (the Keeper of the Records after 1867 in the Office of the Secretary of State of Canada). Regardless of the explanation, it was recognized in 1953, and is no less true today, that it is not feasible to separate out the records belonging to each office and to attach them to their respective fonds. Therefore, these records have been left described as part of RG 4 and users should consult that fonds., Similarly, a considerable quantity of records currently described in the Records of the Executive Council Office of the Province of Lower Canada fonds, in the Land Petitions and Related Records of the Executive Council of the Province of Lower Canada series, date from the Province of Quebec period and consist of documents which the Councils would have created and/or accumulated. Included in that series are not only rough and draft minutes on land matters and Land Committee minutes but also the principal surviving body of land petitions/submissions for the period of the Province of Quebec. Evidently, the original order of the land petitions/submissions was destroyed in the early 1960s by the Archives through the mixing of the records from the Province of Quebec period with those of the Province of Lower Canada period. This inter-mingling prevents the reconstruction of an arrangement based on geo-political entity.
