Ever since 1886 I have from time to time unsuccessfully endeavoured to enlist the services of various editors competent to complete the projected eleven volumes of the Hercules Club publications, but after a lapse of nearly fourteen years I have awakened to the fact that no actual progress has been made, and that I have secured nothing beyond the vague promise of future assistance. The field of editors capable of this class of work being necessarily very limited, and death having recently robbed me in the most promising case of even the slender hope of future help, I determined to ascertain for myself the exact position of the work already done, with the hope of bringing at least some of the volumes to a completion separately, instead of waiting longer in the hope of finishing and issuing them all _en bloc_ as originally proposed and intended. On collating the printed stock I found that the two volumes, _Hariot’s Virginia_ and the _Life of Hariot,_ were practically complete, the text of both all printed off, and the titles and preliminary leaves and the Index to _Hariot’s Virginia_ actually standing in type at the Chiswick Press just as my father left them fourteen years ago! (Many thanks to Messrs Charles Whittingham and Co. for their patience.) The proofs of these I have corrected and passed for press, and I have added the Index to the present volume. My great regret is that I did not sooner discover the practical completeness of these two volumes, as owing to the nature of the contents of the _Life of Hariot_ it is not just to Hariot’s memory, or to that of my father, that such important truths should so long have been withheld from posterity. These two volumes being thus completed, ít remained to be decided in what manner they should be published. I did not feel myself competent to pick up the fallen reins of the HERCULES CLUB, which, as I have said before, appears never to have been fully inaugurated on the intended co-operative basis.