92 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



American minister in the chair') that the Tenth Congress shoukl be held in America in 

 1893. The idea seemed to meet with general approval, bnt it remains to be seen 

 whether the American orientalists will be ready to extend a formal invitation. 



Professor Haupt addressed Iving Oscar at this occasion as follows: 



" I have the honor to present to your majesty the first part of a new publication 

 which is intended to contribute, above all, to the solution of the problem set by your 

 majesty, viz, the history of the Semitic languages. The series is entitled Contri- 

 butions to Assyriology and Comparative Semitic Philology. I submit the first part 

 on behalf of the Johns Hopkins University, of Baltimore, with whose co-operation the 

 work is published. I beg leave to add some other publications issued underthe au- 

 spices of the Johns Hopkins University. 



" 1. The photo lithographic re-production of 17 pages of a Syriac MS. 



"2. A complete series of the Johns Hopkins University circulars, which report on 

 the development of this new university since the year 1879 and which contain at 

 the same time numerous contributions to Oriental research. 



" 3. The 9 volumes of the American Journal of Philology (published at Baltimore 

 lander the auspices of the Johns Hopkins University) which contain several impor- 

 tant articles of our venerable leader in Oriental philology, Professor Whitney, as well 

 as papers by other American orientalists, both ludo European and Semitic. 



" I am also instructed as delegate of the Smithsonian Institution to present to your 

 Majesty on behalf of the U. S. National Museum a number of Babylonian and As- 

 syrian seals (facsimiles and flat impressions) illustrating the methods after which 

 smaller Assyrian and Babylonian objects preserved in private American collections 

 are reproduced for the study collection of the U. S. National Museum. 



"Your majesty will see what interest is had in America in Oriental studies, espe- 

 cially in cuneiform research. There are more instructors in Assyriology now in the 

 United States than at all the European universities combined. Also at this con- 

 gress there are nearly forty American orientalists inscribed as members. 



" 7. I can not suppress the hope that our European foUow-workers in view of the pro- 

 gress of Oriental studies in America will be willing before long to have, perhaps, the 

 Tenth International Congress of Orientalists meet in the United States. The dis- 

 tance will hardly deter many. It will, perhaps, be possible to place at the disposal of 

 the members a steamer which would carry them to America and back again to 

 Europe. Nor would the attendance at the Congress take much time. Even in case 

 there should be G days in Washington (or wherever we should agree to meet), followed 

 by an excursion to the West, Chicago, the Lake region, Niagara Falls, and thence, 

 again, through Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore to Washington, it 

 would be possible to do all that (including the passage across the Atlantic both ways) 

 in a little more than one month. The gracious interest which your majesty has 

 devoted to Oriental studies will always exercise an encouraging influence, and I 

 trust that at the meeting of the Congress on American soil wo shall not be too far 

 behind the older European centers of Oriental learning." 



Respectfully submitted. 



Paul Haupt. 



