In the study of dialect vocabularies it may become of the greatest importance to establish the exact locality of a word and the origin of the persons by whom it is used. For instance, in a family of my acquaintance the word ‘slandering’ = sauntering was familiar. It was a great puzzle to me until I learned that some of the children had been in the care of a German maid. The German word ‘schlendern’ suggested the unquestionable source of the peculiar word. As a source of information regarding the origin of the foreign elements of our population when their native speech shall have been forgotten, but when the influence of it will be left in vocabulary and pronunciation I have thought that a map of the state with the location of all the foreign settlements of even quite small size would be of interest and in time of great value. In the following pages I transmit the results of my inquiries so far as received. It is my intention to make the report complete and to publish the map, when as complete as it can be made, in colors. Unexpected difficulties have delayed the work and prevented its being complete. I depended for my information upon the County Superintendents of the State, a class of unusually intelligent and well-informed men and women. But in not a few cases there seems to have been a suspicion in the mind of my correspondent that I might be a special officer of the state trying to locate violations of the law requiring district schools to be conducted in English, and hence information regarding schools in foreign tongue was withheld or given but partially. And in some cases my informants were not well posted. A superintendent by the name of Schauermann in a county containing a town called Suabia, tells me that there are no foreigners in his county. In such cases time must be taken to secure a correct result. The questions asked were: Locate, and give origin, date and approximate numbers of any settlements—six or more families—of foreigners in your county. Do they still use their language to any extent? Do they have church service and schools conducted in their native tongue? In many replies one or more of these points was neglected so that the information is not yet by any means what I desire to make it. However, for the purpose of dialect study approximate correctness in location is of chief importance, and accuracy as to numbers quite secondary.