Lacock Abbey
Chippenham

Oct 8

Dear Sir

I have sent you separate copies of my two last papers in the Transactions, and request your acceptance of them.

I should like to see M^r Smith ^<1> before he departs again for Mesopotamia, and therefore request you to inform me what day is fixed for his departure?

The last volume of the Transactions had appended to it a “condensed report of the proceedings”, will you allow me to suggest a doubt of the advantage of adding this to the Transactions? partly because when the papers themselves are given in full, it is needless to give an abstract of them, and partly because the Authors are not consulted as to the wording of the abstracts, and it is quite possible when the subject is abstruse or complicated that the Reporter may not seize the Author’s point of view and may therefore unintentionally misrepresent him.

I would confine the Report of Proceedings (if any is given) to those papers that are not printed in the Transactions.

I consider M^r Smith’s last publication, on the Assyrian Canon, ^<2> very important. I hope he will meet with all success in his renewed excavations at Nineveh

Believe me Yours Truly

H. F. Talbot

D^r Birch
B. Mus^m

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Notes:

1. George Smith (1840–1876), Assyriologist. [See Doc. No: 04341].

2. George Smith, The Assyrian Eponym Canon, containing translations of the documents, and an account of the evidence, on the comparative chronology of the Assyrian and Jewish Kingdoms, from the death of Solomon to Nebuchadnezzar (London: British Museum, 1875).