show an early affinity between them. In 1879, he went to London, was elected a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, and began to write works in English. In 1884, he became professor of comparative philology, as applied to the languages of South-Eastern Asia, at University College, London. In the 1880s, he was also employed on several short-term contracts to work on the East-Asian coin collection at the British Museum. In 1892, he published his Catalogue of Chinese Coins from the VIIth Century BC to AS 621 including the Series in the British Museum, for which the Académie des Inscriptions, France, awarded him the Stanislas Julien Prize, worth 1,500 French francs, "for the best work relating to China". His last years were largely occupied by a study of the I Ching, or Book of Changes. Its meaning had long proved a puzzle both to native and to foreign scholars. Terrien demonstrated that the basis of the work consisted of fragmentary notes, chiefly lexical in character, and noticed that they bore a close resemblance to the syllabaries of Chaldaea. In 1892, he published the first part of an explanatory treatise The Oldest Book of the Chinese (London, 8 volumes), in which he stated his theory of the nature of the I Ching, and gave translations of passages from it. The treatise, however, was not completed before his death. In recognition of his services to oriental study he received a Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Leuven. He also enjoyed for a time a small pension from the French government, and after that had been withdrawn an unsuccessful attempt was made by his friends to obtain him an equivalent from the English ministry. He was twice awarded the prix Stanislas Julien by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres for his services to oriental philology. Evaluations of Lacouperie's theories Lacouperie's translations and Sino-Babylonian theories that the origins of Chinese civilization lay in Mesopotamia impressed the public but were criticised or dismissed by sinologists then and in following years. James Legge, whose translations of the Chinese Classics appeared at the same time as Terrien's and are still considered standard, questioned Terrien's sinological competence. Legge's review of Lacouperie's translation of the I Ching charged that only "hasty ignorance" could have led to the mistakes, which included failing to consult the basic reference, the Kangxi Dictionary. Another reviewer at the time labelled Terrien a