form, would be put to every person likely to have traditional cognisance of the matter. 

By the end of the first century of the Hegira, our author thinks that by far the greater part of the traditions of the Mahometan world were in the hands of the professional traditionists, and had been already formularised by them. But each Collector as yet possessed only his own separate and limited store. By degrees these were brought together in the course of the second century, and, as rills converging from all quarters, formed the mighty stream of tradition. Men still compassed sea and land in search of something new; and here and there one might have the good fortune to light upon a fresh tradition. But as time rolled on, such sources all dried up. The competition and jealousy of the traditionists subjected new matter to the severest tests; and if a recently found tradition broke down under the scrutiny, the propagator lost his character for veracity. It was thus that Ibn Ishâc and others fell into disrepute among some of their contemporaries. 

Tradition, as above described, is not confined to details belonging to the lifetime of Mahomet. The childish habit was contracted of putting the relation of every trivial fact and story into the popular form of a tradition with its string of authorities; and there is consequently a great mass of quasi-traditional matter on the early progress of Islam subsequent to the Prophet's death. Excluding this, and confining our view solely to what belongs to the lifetime of Mahomet, it is remarkable that the original sources, the recognised "Sheikhs" or Fathers of tradition, are comparatively few, great numbers having been rejected by the Collectors as inadmissible. . Thus Hâshid (d. 258) relates that he had heard the recitals of 1750 Sheikhs, but adopted in his collection the traditions of but 310; he had collected separate traditions to the number of one million and a half, but accepted only 300,000. Wâckidi, again, amassed probably a couple of millions, but the number of Sheikhs he relied on was small. Setting aside repetitions of the same occurrence, he retained in his collection not more than some 40,000 traditions, of which perhaps not half are genuine; and even of these, many relate to one and the same subject-matter.