about the middle of the year 1887, having bought from Dr. R. N. Oust a lot of books and papers relating to the African languages, I found amongst them a Gebilee and Bornoo manuscript Vocabulary, very carefully written on three double sheets of rough paper: on examining it, the Gebilee proved at once to be a Berber dialect, spoken in the mountainous region lying about 50 miles S. of Tripoli, and extending 150 miles in a direction from W.SW. to E.NE. However, inasmuch as I was then engaged in another part of Africa, I had not at first attached much importance to this document; but, later on, having sent it for inspection to Prof. René Basset, of Algiers, this eminent scholar urged on me the necessity of publishing my manuscript, the peculiar dialect to which it refers having not yet been illustrated; at the same time, he sent me some valuable Notes, which have greatly helped me to extricate myself amongst many inaccuracies.

As will be in our readers' memory, the Society had this year to deplore the loss of Dr. Schrumpf. His sudden and premature decease, cutting short so promising a career, was a serious blow to Oriental studies. His relative, Mons. Schnæbelé, of Nancy, has gracefully and generously determined to present to this Society the Armenian books of our deceased friend as a memorial of the life and labours of an earnest co-worker with us in the field of Oriental research. Professor Minas Tchéraz has very kindly drawn up the following list of the. books in the Schrumpf Collection, which he has also increased by some donations from himself, and the list is published here in order that it may be of service in the furtherance of those studies which Dr. Schrumpf loved so well.

The following notes are perhaps somewhat miscellancous, but they may help to re-direct attention to an interesting subject, recalling the history of European studies of it with some of the results obtained. And since the scheme arranged by Mr. Whitley Stokes for cataloguing the Sanskrit works in Indian libraries, private and other, and for obtaining copies of the rarer ones has yielded such excellent results in all departments, it will perhaps be possible for Orientalists now to publish and translate some of the more important Siddhântas and Karaṇas hitherto inaccessible, and which would be most useful in tracing the origins and history of this Indian science.

Chaṭṭhe jhāyīnaṃ yadidaṃ Nandāti jhānābhiratānaṃ Nandā therī aggā ti dasseti.

Sā kira Padumuttarabuddhakāle Haṃsavatiyaṃ kulagehe paṭisandhiṃ. gahetvā aparabhāge Satthu dhammaṃ suṇantī Satthāram ekaṃ bhikkhuniṃ jhānabhiratānaṃ aggaṭṭhāne ṭhapetum disvā adhikārakammaṃ katvā taṃ ṭhānantaraṁ patthesi.

It is well known that, as Mr. Wylie has said, “Works of Fiction par excellence are not admitted to form a part of the Chinese National Literature.” We look in vain for such books in the Catalogue of the Imperial Library. In the Supplements to the Ch'un Ch'iû of Confucius, especially in that of Tso Ch'iû-ming, we find many narratives full of stirring adventure, which have secured for him the title of “The Froissart of China.” But his Work belongs to the department of history, and the finest passages in it owe their interest to the ability of the author, whom the late Stanislas Julien used to denominate, in his letters to me, “Un grand écrivain.” In the works of Lieh-tsze, who could hardly be later than Tso Ch'iû-ming, and of Chwang-tsze, we have a good deal of Tâoist mythology and speculation; and, later on, Han Fei, Hwai-nan Tsze, Han Ying, Liû Hsiang, and others supply us with a multitude of incidents and anecdotes, with now and then an apologue, employed to point the moral of some classical passage or important statement of the authoritative writings of the Schools to which they severally belonged.

For the last twenty years the question of the decipherment of the hieroglyphic texts found in Syria and Asia Minor, representing a distinct written character, has excited the interest of Orientalists; and for the last five the question has been much discussed in England and abroad. Fresh monuments have been copied by Puchstein and Hogarth, and a second bilingual has been recovered from Cilicia; but the number of texts which are of any length, or at all complete, is only two dozen, and we are still at the very beginning of the study. We may expect, however, that the successors of those who recovered the Egyptian and Cuneiform systems will, in the end, not fail to conquer a third system, the study of which must be conducted on the same principles, and must result from the same gradual advance, which led to the former final results.

The study of Akkadian is based on upwards of thirty bilingual inscriptions of considerable length, the texts having been translated into Assyrian in the seventh century B.C. The affinity of the language to the Mongolic dialects of Central Asia, and especially to the Uigur and Turkish, is very generally recognized by scholars, the syntax and grammar, not less than the vocabulary, pointing to such comparison. The following notes refer to points which are not generally mentioned in former treatises on the subject, but which seem clearly deducible from a study of the texts, and from comparison with living languages.