Mss Eur Orme OV.

The Orme Various or O.V. volumes, containing chiefly originals or duplicates.

As regards the contents of the Orme Various volumes, it must not be supposed that these are of anything like equal value. Putting aside the differences naturally arising from the capacity or authority of the writers, many of the papers are merely notes or indexes which, though they illustrate the care exercised by Orme in the preparation and collation of his material, add nothing to the general sum of information.

A further large number are copies of, or extracts from, official papers which still exist elsewhere and are better consulted in the original. Even these have, however, some value, in that they often suggest to the student sources of information of which he would not otherwise have been aware.

On the other hand, the positive value of the Collection is very great for the following reasons:

(1) It contains a large number of documents, with an almost complete set of military journals, no other copies of which are known to exist. These are of special interest to the student of military history and biography, but they also contain much information regarding the geography and topography of the country and the manners, customs, and religion of the people. The historical information, beginning almost with the arrival of the British in India and extending beyond the first war with Haidar Ali, covers a much longer period than that actually dealt with in Orme's History.

(2) It contains copies of official and demi-official documents whuich have now been lost. This is particularly important because the seventeenth and eighteenth century officials records of both the French and English East India Companies are frequently defective, and the demi-official correspondence, not being recognized as the property of the Company or the Government, was treated as the private property of the receiver and very often destroyed. A good deal of the secret history of the war with Haidar Ali is to be found in the Orme Collection.

(3) It gives us much information about the very interesting personality of Orme himself, his motives in writing his History, the nature and style of the task which he proposed to undertake and his reasons for giving up the work. The Titles or Headings of the various Manuscripts are taken, in general, verbatim et literatim, from the Manuscripts themselves, or from their endorsements, or from the Table of Contents. In the notes the names of places have been generally, but not always, written according to the orthodox spelling.