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Abstract

IN Oriental matters, more than in any other branch of investigation, the student is beset at every step by the difficulty of knowing what has been done already, for, besides books and papers published in London and other European capitals (which are accessible enough), there are those published in the East itself by numerous Societies as well as private individuals. In addition, many of the Journals and Proceedings of Societies to which the student would desire to refer are long since out of print, and many of them fetch a very high price indeed. Such are the Chinese Repository, the Oriental Repertory, Logan's Journal of the Indian Archipelago, and many others that could be named. In London these can be consulted at the British Museum, at the libraries of the India Office and the Royal Asiatic Society, and perhaps elsewhere; but this is of little service to the student elsewhere in the British Islands, and still less to one who is working in the very field itself, in the Malay Peninsula, Java, Borneo, Bangkok, or China. Occasionally, an enterprising Society or publisher may republish some of these old papers, but this is not often done, for the number of immediate buyers is necessarily small, and the return therefore slow and doubtful.

Miscellaneous Papers relating to Indo-China.

2 Vols. Trübner's Oriental Series. (London: Trübner and Co., 1886.)