The concluding number for the past year of the Chinese Recorder and Mistionary Journal has been published in good time, and contains some extremely interesting matter. Readers of the periodical will be glad to hear that, under its present management, it has been found possible to increase its size, and that for the future each number will contain about seventy pages of reading matter, for the small subscription of $3 per annum, Although nominally a class organ, the Recorder has always opened its columns to papers of merit on miscellaneous topics connected with the East, and within its pages are preserved many valuable notes, and the records of many observations which in all probability would otherwise have been lost. The index, however, in the present number, is very defective, containing nothing more than a bald list of the headings of papers, and this, in a work of this nature, which will eventually becom extensively useful as a work of reference, must be looked upon as a shortcoming. The November-December number opens with a conti tion of Dr. Bretschneider's notes on Chinese Medieval Travellers, and is devoted to a consideration of the Si-shi-ki, 'a small work describing the travels of the Chinese envoy Ch'ang-te, sent by the Mongol Emperor Mangou Khan in the year 1259, to his brother Houlagou, who had just succeeded in overthrowing the Caliph of Bagdad. This pamphlet had already been translated by Remusat and Pauthi but with the usual want of accuracy which unfortunately marks the Chinese labours of those two men. Their texts were, besides, incorrect, but for this latter they would not be held responsible, not having the opportunities at Dr. Bretschneider's disposal for cor paring the various surviving text Dr. Brelschneider's notes are peculiarly valuable, ho having made the history of medieval China his special study; and he is thereby able to elucidate a rather poor description with valuable notes. It is only with the greatest care that the information concealed in the few records of travels of those times handed down to can be put in an available shape, and yet few historical topics are at present of greater interest than the revolutions which have taken place in Central Asia, Never in fact was the civilisation of the West in so great danger of extinction as at the time when Ghengis Khan and his successors were masters of Asia from the Yellow Sea to the Caspian, and when already their victorious arms for a time eclipsed the infant power of Muscovy, Mr. Phillips' paper entitled Zaitun Researches, will, as touching more generally
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.