In carrying through the work I have sought to supplement my own deficiencies from the most competent sources to which friendship afforded access. Sir JOSEPH HOOKER has most kindly examined almost every one of the proof-sheets for articles dealing with plants, correcting their errors, and enriching them with notes of his own. Another friend, Professor ROBERTSON SMITH, has done the like for words of Semitic origin, and to him I owe a variety of interesting references to the words treated of, in regard to their occurrence, under some cognate form, in the Scriptures. In the early part of the book the Rev. GEORGE MOULE (now Bishop of Ningpo), then in England, was good enough to revise those articles which bore on expressions used in China (not the first time that his generous aid had been given to work of mine). Among other friends who have been ever ready with assistance I may mention Dr. REINHOLD ROST, of the India Library; General ROBERT MACLAGAN, R.E.; Sir GEORGE BIRDWOOD, C.S.I.; Major-General R. H. KEATINGE, V.C., C.S.I.; Professor TERRIEN DE LA COUPERIE; and Mr. E. COLBORNE BABER, at present Consul-General in Corea. Dr. J. A. H. MURRAY, editor of the great English Dictionary, has also been most kind and courteous in the interchange of communications, a circumstance which will account for a few cases in which the passages cited in both works are the same. My first endeavour in preparing this work has been to make it accurate; my next to make it—even though a Glossary—interesting. In a work intersecting so many fields, only a fool could imagine that he had not fallen into many mistakes; but these when pointed out, may be amended. If I have missed the other object of endeavour, I fear there is little to be hoped for from a second edition. H. YULE. _5th January 1886._ PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The twofold hope expressed in the closing sentence of Sir Henry Yule's Preface to the original Edition of this book has been amply justified. More recent research and discoveries have, of course, brought to light a good deal of information which was not accessible to him, but the general accuracy of what he wrote has never been seriously impugned—while those who have studied the pages of _Hobson-Jobson_ have agreed in classing it as unique among similar works of reference, a volume which combines interest and amusement with instruction, in a manner which few other Dictionaries, if any, have done.