COMITY. REV. W. C. POND, SAN FRANCISCO. From the first I have conducted the operations of our mission on principles of denominational comity. There are five distinct missions at work for the Chinese of California, besides our own. The Presbyterian has schools in San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, San José, and, perhaps, I may add, at Napa and Santa Rosa, though I am not aware that the work done in these two places is directly connected with their Board; the Methodist mission has schools also in San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, and San José, and one besides, at Chico; the Baptist and Episcopal missions conduct each one school in this city; the United Presbyterian mission has schools in Oakland and Los Angeles. The total number of schools sustained by all these missions—so far as I am informed—is thus 15. Our mission has six schools in San Francisco, and ten elsewhere. Sacramento and Oakland are the only points outside this city occupied by us and by other missions also. At each of these points our schools were first established, and we have not felt it due to comity to abandon our work begun and carried on for years because others came in to divide it with us. But we have never yet planted a school in any field already occupied, unless San Francisco be an exception, where the occupation was so incomplete, that we, ourselves, having one school, have established five others. I am led to these remarks partly because the facts, it seems to me, are worth reporting, and partly because, just now, questions of comity have been and are still before us to be answered. Thus, in accordance with a purpose expressed at the close of our last fiscal year, to do something this year for the large colony of Chinese that has established itself in the town of Chico, I visited that town last month. I heard of a school as already established—though its existence had been before unknown to the pastor with whom I had corresponded. I visited the school; found four pupils present, and learned that it was sustained by the Methodist Mission. There was room for so much more to be done that I made conditional arrangements for planting a school there. The condition was that the Methodist Mission should give us cordial welcome and divide the field with us territorially. But our Methodist brethren say that they would prefer to occupy the whole territory, and promise to do so in adequate force, and therefore we have withdrawn. The large town of Vallejo has a Chinese population somewhat exceeding 200, and no one was caring for their souls. I determined to put into that field the work which I had intended to do at Chico. I have made arrangements accordingly—renting a mission-house, engaging a teacher, and arranging for a helper to go there as soon as the building can be made ready. But the school will be in special relation with the Presbyterian Church, there being no Congregational Church, except at South Vallejo, nearly two miles distant.