memoranda that were eventually obtained differed widely in quantity and quality. Then by the time that these had been collected from various sources many portions of the earlier Gazetteers had become more or less obsolete, and most of the remainder needed revision. Moreover, the general chapters on history and geology superseded or absorbed corresponding district sections. It was therefore resolved, with the consent of the authors of the finished Reports, to alter the whole plan of the Gazetteer for the province-to break up the divisions by districts, and to substitute an arrangement according to subjects. The Editor was thereby enabled to avail himself more effectually of all contributions received; to select the good and reject the bad parts of an article without appearing to prune too unmercifully; and to give each district its share of the advantage gained by massing under one chapter the whole array of facts and figures bearing upon one subject.

By this alliance of forces each district supplies the others' deficiency, and gaps are reinforced along the whole line; while such information as is forthcoming can be presented in the handiest formation and most convenient series. This gain, such as it is, has been made, at any rate, without any sacrifice of things essential; since the territorial limits of our districts have only very recently been determined, and have been marked out upon considerations with which the Gazetteer has no real concern.

This brief account of the process by which the Gazetteer has been put together is intended to explain why its internal arrangement is not throughout symmetrical. Chapters IX. and XIV. contain each a complete article, and Chapter VIII. is almost entirely of one piece: for these the Editor is exclusively responsible, both as to substance and style, since nothing has been absorbed or extracted without acknowledgment from the district papers. The remaining chapters are prefaced by a sort of introduction, meant usually to bring the subject within compass of a general survey before going into details, sometimes meant to supply omissions in the descriptions that follow. But this introduction has more than once spread out into a kind of separate dissertation.

Then, after the introductions, come District Selections, chosen out of all the materials provided by district officers.

It will be noticed that every chapter has not a "selection" for each of all six districts, because, as has been mentioned above, only two complete Gazetteers were obtained; and so long as enough had been said on any topic six separate contributions were not insisted upon.

The whole work, as now sent forth with permission of the Resident at Haidarábád, is of course very imperfect, and might have been amplified by devoting another year to collecting material. But the

present Editor believes that a Gazetteer should be restricted within somewhat narrow conditions of time and space-of time, because much of its contents will not keep; of space, because to be useful a Gazetteer must be brief and compendious. The first object of the publication is taken to be that of presenting a statistical account of the province, of its people, its social state, economy, and natural resources, with some narrative of its antecedent history as framework and background to the picture. The second object-as yet very inadequately attained— should be (it is conceived) to encourage and promote the compilation for each province of something like what is called in England a County History. But with regard to this object the business of an English official editor is only to point the way; and in the Berár Gazetteer this has been attempted by inserting here and there (especially in Chapter X.) much minute local description which is of interest only to the provincials. The fulfilment of such a project must be left to the people themselves; many years hence, when one of our educated natives shall have contracted some tincture of real literary taste, he may take to collecting and preserving the annals of his province, which are now fast disappearing as the " old order changeth, yielding place to new."

However, the Gazetteer now produced may serve as a first edition, to be much improved hereafter. The author of the papers on Elichpúr district is Captain H. S. Szczepanski, Deputy Commissioner, whose description of Elichpúr City and its environs is good. The accounts of Melghat were composed by Captain K. L. Mackenzie, excepting certain portions taken from a Report by Captain Farrar. The Wún Gazetteer was written by Mr. C. A. Davies, Extra Assistant Commissioner, under the superintendence of Captain J. Bushby, Deputy Commissioner. For Amráoti some very useful articles were prepared by Captain J. Alexander, and it is unlucky that many of his commercial statistics lost their original value through delay in their publication. In Akola the work had been quite neglected until in 1869 it was made over to Mr. J. H. Burns, who wrote all the selected pieces for that important district. They are marked, for the most part, by that exact knowledge which is possessed only by writers who (so to speak) have seen and handled what they describe. To Mr. Burns the Gazetteer is indebted for much solid information which, on certain topics, his contributions alone supply. Major J. Allardyce exerted himself to procure valuable material for Buldána; and by him Mr. Nárayan Wáman, Deputy Educational Inspector, was induced to write the creditable, because original, accounts of towns in that district.

Contributions from outside Berár-from Dr. T. Oldham, Superintendent of Geological Survey; from Colonel A. C. McMaster, of the

Madras Army; and from Major P. Elphinstone, of the Survey Department-have been acknowledged in the text; while the Gazetteer is much indebted to the Surveyor General's Office (to Captain W. G. Murray particularly) for two maps.

The system of spelling native words which has been used in this Gazetteer is that which has been authoritatively prescribed for all India-with this exception, that the Editor has taken upon himself to substitute accents for prosodial marks. The accentuation is not consistent throughout, but there are no misleading blunders in the principal words. The principle of the transliteration need not here be defended, save by the remark that, so far as concerns the spelling of a Gazetteer, this system seems to have been opposed from a point of view too exclusively English. The question may be said to be not so much what letters convey certain sounds most easily and surely to the ear of an Englishman, but what letters may best serve as a common vehicle of sound to the several nations who read English in India. Now for this purpose there can be no doubt that a system which assigns to each single vowel its separate sound, that can be rendered in no other way, is superior to the arbitrary English pronunciation, which has been formed merely by custom; while for neatness and concise construction of words the use of single instead of double vowels has a manifest advantage in appearance.

A. C. L.