As botanists and zoologists trace the successive stages of existence traversed by living plants and animals through species and genera to families, so the historian of human progress finds himself obliged to extend his generalizations through tribes and nations to races. Research proves that it is these larger units who, through the combined work of the several component parts of the race, are the authors of the underlying ideas which are acted out in its achievements. It also seems to show that there are two races who have most materially aided in the development of civilization— one, quiet, silent, hard-working and practical, whose members have always looked on the public benefit of the tribe or nation to which they belonged as their best incentive to action: the other, impulsive, sensitive, generous, and eloquent, who have looked on personal glory and the aggrandizement of their families and personal adherents as the object of their ambition.

“The Story of Chin, P'ing, and Mei.” A Novel. A Description of Chinese manners and customs, especially with reference to Courtship and Marriage, the design of which, according to the Preface, is to promote Virtue and to discourage Vice. 2 cases, 20 vols. Ref. B.M. p. 11.

The question of the antiquity of the Chinese nation has long exercised the minds of Sinologists, and various are the conclusions arrived at by them on the subject.

Professor Lacouperie has pointed out that the Chinese are offshoots of the Accadian stock. This I am quite ready to admit; but I cannot agree with him in thinking that the early Chinese Emperors can be identified with Babylonian Kings about 2000 years B.C. There are no ancient monuments, inscribed sarcophagi and stones, or contemporary excessive antiquity; so we are compelled to criticize carefully the evidence handed down to us in the shape of the old Chinese classics.

The traveller in Egypt who wishes to visit the Mosque of Amr may now leave Cairo either by train or carriage, and step out in the immediate neighbourhood. But he who prefers the most picturesque and interesting route will either ride or walk, and taking the street which runs parallel to the Khalīg, or Canal of Cairo, will pass out of the town by the gate of Sayyida Zeinab. Following the road past the picturesque little Mosque of Zein al Ābidin, he will pass under the Aqueduct, and proceed along the track which leads him through a country of mounds and dust-heaps past the Mosque of Abu-s-Suūd to the N. front of the building which he seeks (see Plan I.). Here let him ascend the mound which lies outside the huts by which the facade of the Mosque is shut in, and, facing towards them, take a general view of the scene. To his left he looks over a dusty space of comparatively low-lying ground, to the Aqueduct under which he passed twenty minutes ago; on his left front the citadel of Cairo stands out in the distance beyond a large expanse of high dust-mounds. Straight before him is the Mosque, but he can see little of it excepting the higher part of the two minarets, the mass of huts shutting out the view of the low walls; but behind the Mosque, at some two miles' distance, the limestone cliffs of Mukattam gleam in the sunshine: while further to the right the eye rests on a dusty height crowned by disused windmills.

The striking fact that the Buddha has been officially enrolled in the list of the saints of the Christian Church has very naturally attracted much attention to the book to which this strange result is due. This book, a romance in Greek, founded on some unknown Buddhist life of the Buddha, was ascribed in some of the later MSS. to St. John of Damascus, and this was the view held by scholars until the publication in 1886 of the masterly monograph by M. H. Zotenberg (Notices sur la livre de Barlaam et Joasaph). He there shows conclusively that the John who was the author of the romance was not John of Damascus, but a monk of the convent of St. Saba near Jerusalem, who wrote it in the commencement of the seventh century A.D. This romance, whose hero, though really the Buddha, appealed so strongly to the sympathies of the Christians, that they raised him to the rank of a saint, contains, besides the description of the life and character of the hero, a number of fables, some of which have been traced back to the Buddhist Jataka book, while the source of others is still unknown. This being so, it becomes of great importance to ascertain the earliest form of the story. Now it is admitted that the numerous versions of it in various European languages (of which a list is given in my ‘ Buddhist Birth Stories,’ vol. i. pp. xcv and foll.)

I closed the Appendix to the last Essay of this series, published in April, 1890, by adducing proof that Māghada and Bhārata were derived from the roots Mag amd Bhṛi, both of which mean “to bring forth,” and that they both meant “the sons of the great mother who brings forth all mankind.”

The following narrative is abridged from a Japanese book called “Nankai Kibun” (Notes of the Southern Ocean), which records the examination by the officials of Ohikuzen in Kiushiu, of a native of that province, named Magotarō, who had been cast away on an island near Mindanao, and, after a captivity of seven years, was ultimately brought back to Japan in a Dutch ship.

[In the absence of a proper catalogue, which the Council of the Society hope soon to have prepared, the following rough list of the titles of the Sanskrit MSS. in the Society's collection may prove useful to scholars.]

Before entering on the subject of Transliteration, I propose to submit a few preliminary remarks on the formation of graphic systems generally, and the rules which ought to regulate their application.

After devoting two successive seasons to investigating some of the Buddhist mounds in the Krishna and Godavari districts of the Madras Presidency, and having on occasions conducted excavations at various other places, the experience thus gained may be of service, if placed at the disposal of those whose duty or pleasure it is to conduct such interesting work.

In bringing forward a scheme for the conversion of the Arabic character to the Latin—the second most widely spread alphabet of the world to the first—a word may be said as to the objections which the mere mention of such a proposal invariably evolves.

[“This is my last contribution to Indian archæology. It contains views which I have arrived at after a careful and continuous study, extending over twenty-six years, of the Kshatrap coins and inscriptions.” These were among the last words of Paṇḍit Bhagvānlāl Indraji, who almost up to the day of his death was engaged in completing the article now published. Hisv death in March, 1888, was a real loss to Indian archaeology. The tributes paid to his memory by Prof. Peterson in the Academy, by Dr. Bühler in the Indian Antiquary, by Mr. Javerilal Umiashankar Yajnik and Dr. Codrington in the Journal Bombay Asiatic Society, testify to the esteem in which he was held, both as a man and as a scholar, by those who knew him.