The circumstances which made the following work possible are these:

About a year ago a firman was granted giving leave to survey the district lying between Damacus and Haifa, with a view to the construction of a railway. The concessionnaires appointed as their surveyor for the portion of country east of the Jordan Herr Gottlieb Schumacher, that part lying between Haifa and the River having been already surveyed by the officers of this Society for their great Map of Western Palestine. In the course of his work Herr Schumacher found it necessary, as well as possible, to make many scientific observations, notes, maps, and drawings which he afterwards embodied in the memoir which forms the greater part of this volume. The Map, a reduction of which is here published, covers an area of 240 square miles, partly in the Hauran, partly in the Jaulan, a district never before surveyed, and very seldom crossed by the traveller. With the view of giving a more permanent form to the already published papers by Mr. Laurence Oliphant and Mr Guy le Strange on their own travels in trans-Jordanic country, they are incorporated with the volume. The best thanks of the Society are due to Mr. Guy le Strange for the trouble he has taken in editing the volume.