It is appropriate to begin this, the second issue of the relaunched BULLETIN, with some reference to the comments and feed-back we have received. In general, the reception has been favourable, and we have followed what is substantially the same formula for the present issue. The most serious point of criticism concerned the point-size of the main body of the text, which was felt to be on the borderline of legibility. We hope that the modification in this issue will have rectified the problem. Questions about format and content will continue to be reviewed by the editors and by the committee, and feedback from members is actively encouraged.

The last editorial outlined a number of new elements which might form part of the BULLETIN. These included biographical articles describing figures omitted from Stammerjohann's Lexicon Grammaticorum and similar bio-graphical sources. Fredericka van der Lubbe's item on Martin Aedler offers a welcome start to such a series. Aedler, the author of the first grammar of German to be published in English, has remained undeservedly obscure. He belongs to a period which produced a remarkable spread of work on vernacular languages, including the first Russian grammar in English (by Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf, 1655-1710 - another rectifiable omission from Stammer-johann), and the seminal works on Germanic and Celtic comparative philology by Edward Lhuyd and George Hickes. The editors would welcome similar submissions, or suggestions of other figures who deserve biographical notices. There must surely be possible medieval subjects as well as those from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to add to this seventeenth-century beginning.

Another new departure in the present issue is the inclusion of two short papers on the early history of the Henry Sweet Society itself. The idea was sparked off by a reference to the contribution made to the Society by the late Paul Salmon, as described in John Flood's tribute to him published in the last BULLETIN. This prompted the reminiscences of Konrad Koerner which we print, giving an account of the origins of the Society from his own personal perspective and in his own inimitable style. Vivian Salmon's article complements this account by providing a description of the early stages in the practical establishment of the HSS, and incidentally reminds us of the vision and commitment of the founding members. Although these may be viewed essentially one-off contributions, they may suggest other areas where oral history has a valid place in our business. The last decades have seen a flowering of societies and a growth of major research programmes on the study of the history of linguistics; the BULLETIN is perhaps a forum not just for the spreading of information about current activities but the permanent record of the aims and achievements of our colleagues.

By chance as much as design, the present issue has a particularly long review section, ably edited by Herman Bell with assistance from Michael Isermann. A special mention should be made of the appearance of two studies of the first two volumes of Jean-Antoine Caravolas's ambitious work, La didactique des langues. The review by Douglas Kibbee is followed by a longer review-article by Werner Hüllen, which looks in a broader context at the methodology and aims of the Caravolas project. The editors are minded to make a regular feature of a longer review-article in each issue, which might constitute a 'state of the art' survey of work covering a number of recent texts linked by a period or theme. In order to achieve a balance between periods it is likely that such reviews would be commissioned, but all suggestions are very welcome.

One possible future development on which the reaction of readers is now sought, is the possibility of making back copies of the BULLETIN available on the internet. There is no doubt that a younger generation of students is coming to take accessibility and visibility on the 'Web' for granted, and that having our BULLETIN on electronic display will be a means to gain us new younger members (or that failure to do so will risk losing them). There are indeed already journals are available exclusively in electronic form, e.g. The Web Journal of Modern Language Linguistics, of which our own Andrew Linn is an editor. As far as the HSS BULLETIN is concerned, a number of practical decisions would need to be made about the items to be included and excluded, if back copies were to be thus made available, and whether the last back copy should be the immediately preceding issue or those of the previous year. For members to evaluate the possibility, a trial web-site has been prepared with some items from Issue 29 (http://users.ox.ac.uk/~cram/). If this were to be made a more permanent feature, it would of course be made accessible from the Society's website, as advertised on our front cover. It should however be stressed that no final decision about this development will be taken before there has been full discussion both by the Committee and by the AGM.