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the "restoration" had been undertaken by the selectmen of the nearest village three years before my arrival and over a year after I had first planned an expedition to the caves. It is to be feared that the original wall paintings can never be rescued from below the modern plaster ^[[,]] and that dated evidence of North Wei pictorial art is as far removed as ever.
    As my plans and negatives and rubbings of this group of chapels have not yet arrived from China, and I propose to hand in a complete account of them as an appendix to this report, I will only state here that further investigation revealed certain details of sculpture which had not suffered restoration at the village plasterer's hands, and three inscriptions, one of the year 499 A. D., another of 501 A. D., and a third dating from the Ming period and giving a brief description of the caves and their restorations.
      The full meaning of the two earlier of these contemporary notices has not yet been deciphered, but enough progress has been made to show that they are almost unique among inscriptions of that period, and that besides bearing the signatures of several officers of a punitive expedition to the region, they contain curious allusions to Taoist beliefs.
      When I have obtained all the material that I find possible from these inscriptions, I shall ask leave from your Committee to forward them for further elucidation and comment to M. Chavannes, in Paris, who has generously consented to undertake such work on our behalf.
     An adequate account of this important site cannot be submitted at short notice, though the work done on the material while I was in Peking made the above deductions possible.