THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER, VOL. 1

A General of Geography, Physical, Political, Statistical, and DescriptiveNext to a good Dictionary, the most generally useful book is a good gazetteer. At no time, probably, was such a work more urgently wanted than now, when the relations of this country with foreign parts have been so greatly extended, when the progress of British power and enter prise lias opened up so many new fields for scientific inquiry and commercial speculation, and when so many large and interesting additions have been made to our geographical knowledge but which, being mostly confined to special, and often expensive works, and to the transactions of learned societies, have not hitherto been accessible to the public generally.Such were some of the reasons adduced in the Prospectus for commencing to publish the imperial gazetteer, the first part of which was issued in July, 1850. Whatever value these reasons may have possessed at that period, it has gone on increasing at a rapid ratio, until now, at the close of the Work, the hostilities in which we are engaged with one of the mightiest empires of the earth, impart an additional and intense stimulus to the acquirement of geographical knowledge.In concluding this undertaking, which has occupied the Editor S attention, more or less closely, for the last eight years, little more remains than to indicate the plan upon which the gazetteer has been written, and to note some particulars respecting its production.A leading aim throughout has been to maintain a proper medium between those works which give lengthy and elaborate articles, and consequently treat of a comparatively small number of places, and those which, by giving very short meagre articles, Often little better than registers of positions, are enabled to include an immense number of places. While in the number of articles the imperial gazetteer greatly exceeds works of the former, it does not fall much short of works of the latter class, for, by a rigid exclusion of irrelevant matter