according to his story, for seventy guilders (less than £6); he wanted more to part with this one and it is certainly worth many and many times that sum; a change in the usual sordid Government practice would result in remarkable discoveries; recently, as Dr. L. told me, an inscribed stone was laid bare; when trying to have a look at it the same day, his informant told him that it had already been spirited away to prevent _susah_ (trouble); not much is necessary to be sentenced to _krakal_ (hard labour in the chain-gang) at Wonosobo. It is true the Government sent some one to the Diëng, about fifty years ago, to photograph the temples as they then existed and, fortunately, the operator chosen was I. van Kinsbergen who, having made his début in Java as a member of an opera-troupe, developed a rare artistic sense in portraying the deteriorating outlines of the ancient fanes of the island. But there the matter rested until the complaints became too loud and in 1910 hopes were held out that steps would be taken to clear the ruins of parasitic vegetation, to drain the plateau by repairing the trenches and conduits still in working order since the Hindu period, incidentally to consider the possibility of restoring the sanctuaries not yet tumbled down. Names I heard in connection with this charge, make me tremble, writes a correspondent from Batavia, for a repetition of the vandalism committed in the plain of Prambanan, particularly the criminal assaults on the _chandi_ Plahosan and the _chandi_ Sewu, where a Government commissioner tried to arrest further decay on the homoeopathic principle: _similia similibus curantur_. Government solicitude for conservation proves often more destructive than simple neglect and, to take an illustration from the Diëng itself (others will be culled in the course of my observations, from a plentiful supply of official _bêtises_ and _bévues_, if not worse, in other localities), no sooner was general attention drawn to the enigmatic sign, described by Junghuhn and copied in his standard work from a rock between the lakes Warna and Pengilon, than it began to fade. Still quite clear in 1885 and up to 1895, despite its having been exposed to wind and weather during ten centuries (as surmised), it became fainter and fainter after that year, the process of a gradual loss of colour being duly noted at subsequent visits, until in 1902 I found it hardly distinguishable. To make up for the injury, a Contrôleur discovered, in 1889, supplementary tokens, not black but red, on the same Batu Tulis, or Watu Ketèq as the natives rather call it, “monkey-stone”, because they recognise in the figure recorded by Junghuhn, a likeness to the animal referred to. The smaller red letters, or whatever they were intended for, steadily increasing in number, appearing in places where I had never noticed anything before, I could not help suspecting the little shepherds who look so innocent and shy and hardly venture an answer when spoken to, of