As botanists and zoologists trace the successive stages of existence traversed by living plants and animals through species and genera to families, so the historian of human progress finds himself obliged to extend his generalizations through tribes and nations to races. Research proves that it is these larger units who, through the combined work of the several component parts of the race, are the authors of the underlying ideas which are acted out in its achievements. It also seems to show that there are two races who have most materially aided in the development of civilization— one, quiet, silent, hard-working and practical, whose members have always looked on the public benefit of the tribe or nation to which they belonged as their best incentive to action: the other, impulsive, sensitive, generous, and eloquent, who have looked on personal glory and the aggrandizement of their families and personal adherents as the object of their ambition.

The traveller in Egypt who wishes to visit the Mosque of Amr may now leave Cairo either by train or carriage, and step out in the immediate neighbourhood. But he who prefers the most picturesque and interesting route will either ride or walk, and taking the street which runs parallel to the Khalīg, or Canal of Cairo, will pass out of the town by the gate of Sayyida Zeinab. Following the road past the picturesque little Mosque of Zein al Ābidin, he will pass under the Aqueduct, and proceed along the track which leads him through a country of mounds and dust-heaps past the Mosque of Abu-s-Suūd to the N. front of the building which he seeks (see Plan I.). Here let him ascend the mound which lies outside the huts by which the facade of the Mosque is shut in, and, facing towards them, take a general view of the scene. To his left he looks over a dusty space of comparatively low-lying ground, to the Aqueduct under which he passed twenty minutes ago; on his left front the citadel of Cairo stands out in the distance beyond a large expanse of high dust-mounds. Straight before him is the Mosque, but he can see little of it excepting the higher part of the two minarets, the mass of huts shutting out the view of the low walls; but behind the Mosque, at some two miles' distance, the limestone cliffs of Mukattam gleam in the sunshine: while further to the right the eye rests on a dusty height crowned by disused windmills.

[In the absence of a proper catalogue, which the Council of the Society hope soon to have prepared, the following rough list of the titles of the Sanskrit MSS. in the Society's collection may prove useful to scholars.]