careless Editor. They will I trust continue their invaluable labours for 

 the Society, certain that a greater degree of steadiness and method in 

 the management of the Journal will render it a more worthy medium 

 for the publication of the result of their researches. The Honorable 

 the President has assured the Society of the communication to it as 

 heretofore of such scientific papers, coming as public documents before 

 Government, as it may be deemed proper and expedient to allow the 

 publication of. In short, the Journal leaves my hands with, I trust, the 

 certain assurance, that past support will be continued to it, and with 

 every certainty as respects the internal economy of its conduct, of most 

 material improvement. I conducted it with distaste to the work, under 

 the constant and heavy pressure of other business, and solely as a duty 

 which, rather than let the Journal fall, I undertook, there being 

 for the time no other person willing to become its Editor. The 

 interesting discoveries of James Prinsep, I trusted to see followed 

 up by farther local research on the extension of British influence 

 on a firm basis beyond the Indus, and I looked of course to carry 

 on the communication, at any rate, of facts and observations, upon this 

 important opening into the history of the past people of Central Asia. 

 My three friends, and correspondents from Affghanistan, Lieut. Conolly, 

 Dr. Lord, and Mr. Pigou, were successively killed in action within 

 a short time one of the other. This misfortune deeply discouraged me, 

 and I was never able to arrange so as to supply the loss. Subsequent 

 sad events put a stop to all hope of carrying out in the pages of the 

 Journal, even so much as the record of observations in a field so inter- 

 esting to the historian and the antiquary. The able support of that 

 eminently accomplished numismatist, Lieut. Cunningham, of the Bengal 

 Engineers, was long afforded me until his undertaking his work on the 

 successors of Alexander in the East, when it was necessarily for a time 

 suspended ; and as the increased and increasing demand upon the undi- 



