It is impossible to value too highly the services of voluntary helpers from the beginning to the present day. The completeness and accuracy of the work, which is probably without a rival in any country or in any age, could not have been secured except by editors of the greatest learning and ability and by the training of a lifetime; but these qualities would not have availed if the work had not been founded upon inductive investigations of a range never before attempted. For the wealth of the materials made available our gratitude is due to readers not only in the United Kingdom but in all parts of the world, and notably in the United States of America, where the Dictionary is regarded with affectionate admiration as the common achievement of the English-speaking people. Valuable, however, as the work of these voluntary helpers has been, an even larger debt of gratitude is due to the faithful labours of the editorial staff of assistants, some of whom can trace back their term of service to the earliest years of the undertaking. To their acumen, vigilance, and zeal have been and are due in large measure the completeness of the evidence and the correctness of detail in the presentation of words and their meanings. Dr. Murray with his staff moved to Oxford in 1885, and there the work has been continuously carried on, partly in the _Scriptorium_ attached to Dr. Murray’s house, partly (and in recent years wholly) in the _Old Ashmolean Building_, next door to the old Sheldonian Press and within a stone’s throw of the Bodleian. Here, as a section of the alphabet comes to be treated, the material is sifted, extracts from it are put in order, fresh investigations, often laborious, are undertaken to settle etymologies and doubtful points in the history of a word; copy is prepared for the printer, and references are checked. The complete preparation of the material involves researches of the most varied nature, some of which lead the editors even beyond the confines of our own language to novel and important discoveries.