PREFACE. 
We cannot permit our second volume to go forth without a few words 
to our readers, although we may seem to have exhausted the little we had 
to say, in our first volume. 
A second year has given rather more maturity to our plan, and, as 
we predicted, increased materially the contributions to the work. But 
owing to an accidental circumstance, which is not likely to be again 
attended with the same consequences, we have been throughout the year, 
in arrears of the regular time of publication, and have consequently been 
less able to avail ourselves of the many valuable papers placed at 
our disposal. Besides the appearance which this has occasioned of 
neglecting our Correspondents favors, it has to others seemed as if oc- 
casioned by a want of materials, so thatthis irregularity in publication has 
been, we fear, every way injurious to the work. Notwithstanding the 
having to struggle against this difficulty, the work has been steadily 
advancing, as the present list of Subscribers, compared with our former 
one, will serve to show. 
Besides this increase of support from our Subscribers, generally, the Go- 
vernment have extended their patronage to the work, by considerately re- 
mitting, pending a reference to the Honorable the Court of Directors, the 
postage hitherto levied on it, which, though slight, was doubtless an 
impediment to its more general circulation, amounting, as it did, to 
one-fourth the price of the work. We are not the less & sensible of' or 
grateful for the liberal views manifested on this occasion, by their condi- 
tional nature, inasmuch as we recognise the difficulty of making an ex- 
ception in favor of one publication, amongst so many, unless it could be 
shown, that the Government had an interest in doing so. As the price of 
the boon granted to us, we have undertaken the task of digesting and 
publishing, free of expense to Government, the many valuable contribu- 
tions to Geography, and general science, known to exist in the public offices 
of this Presidency. These papers will, we doubt not, raise the character of 
our work ; they have been hitherto virtually lost to the public, and would 
soon, in a climate, the influences of which are so destructive, be so altoge- 
