Thirdly, I think that Oriental studies have a claim on the colonies and the colonial governments. The English colonies are scattered all over the globe, and many of them in localities where an immense deal of useful scientific work might be done, and would be done with the slightest encouragement from the local authorities, and something like a systematic supervision on the part of the Colonial Office at home. Some years ago I ventured to address the Colonial Secretary of State on this subject, and a letter was sent out in consequence to all the English colonies, inviting information on the languages, monuments, customs, and traditions of the native races. Some most valuable reports have been sent home during the last five or six years, but when it was suggested that these reports should be published in a permanent form, the expense that would have been required for printing every year a volume of Colonial Reports, and which would not have amounted to more than a few hundred pounds for all the colonies of the British Empire, part of it to be recovered by the sale of the book, was considered too large. Now we should bear in mind that at the present moment some of the tribes living in or near the English colonies in Australia, Polynesia, Africa, and America, are actually dying out, their languages are disappearing, their customs, traditions, and religions will soon be completely swept away. To the student of language, the dialect of a savage tribe is as valuable as Sanskrit or Hebrew, nay, for the solution of certain problems, more so; every one of these languages is the growth of thousands and thousands of years, the workmanship of millions and millions of human beings. If they were now preserved, they might hereafter fill the most critical gaps in the history of the human race. At Rome at the time of the Scipios, hundreds of people might have written down a grammar and dictionary of the Etruscan language, of Oscan, or Umbrian; but there were men then, as there are now, who shrugged their shoulders and said, What can be the use of preserving these barbarous, uncouth idioms?--What would we not give now for some such records?