I have again to deplore the death of one of my colleagues, Mr. G. Bertin, whose contributions to Assyriology had secured for him a foremost place in the small band of Assyrian scholars. Like M. Amiaud, he had especially devoted himself to the study of Sumerian, in which, therefore, his loss will be particularly felt. His valuable contribution to the third volume of the present series of Records of tbe Past on the precepts of early Sumerian agriculture was one of the last literary works upon which he was engaged.