nquiry, and on my
next return to Borneo I shall, in all probability, be able to set
the question at rest, whether there be two or three species in that
country. Believe me, my dear sir, with best wishes, to remain,

Yours very truly, J. Brooke.

Borneo, like Celebes, teems with Natural History unknown to European
science; and Mr. Brooke has sent some remarkable specimens to England,
though his own large collection was, unfortunately, wrecked on its
voyage homeward. Every arrival, however, is now adding to the stores
we already possess. The British Museum has been much enriched, even
within the last year, with rare specimens of zoology and botany; and
at the Entomological Society there have been exhibited and described
many curious insects hitherto strange and unclassified.

No. II.

PHILOLOGY.

It was intended in this work to convey to the studious in
philology,--upon which science, rationally investigated, so
much depends on our ability to ascertain the origin and trace the
earliest relations of mankind,--as copious a vocabulary of the Dyak
language, with definitions of meaning and cognate references, as
might be considered a useful contribution to that important branch
of learning. But various considerations have induced us to forego
the design; and not the least of them has been, not the difficulty,
but the impossibility of reducing the whole collection to a system,
or of laying down any certain rule of orthography in this Oriental
confusion. Nearly all the vowels, for example, have been found of
equal value; and as they have but one general Malay name, so it
happens that (for instance) the consonants _b d_might be pronounced
with the intervening sound, _bad_, _bed_, _bid_, _bod_, _bud_, and
sundry variations beside, unknown to the English tongue. This will in a
great degree account for the universally vexatious, because puzzling,
spelling, inflections, and pronunciation of Eastern names, which
is so injurious to the literature and knowledge of those countries
among Europeans.

The vowel-sounds adopted are:

_a_ like _a_ in _father_.
_e_ " _a_ in _fan_.
_i_ " Italian _i_, or _ee_ in _thee_.
_i_ " _i_ in _pin_.
_o_ " _o_ in _spoke_.
_u_ " _oo_ in _cool_.
_u_ " u in run.
_y_ occasionally like