 Writing in 1931, Mathews cites the "rapid changes which have taken place in China," the "influx of modern inventions and the advance of scientific knowledge" as having given rise to new expressions in the thirty years since Baller's dictionary.This made Baller's dictionary out of date, necessitating the compiling of a new dictionary.Mathews included entries for 7,785 Chinese characters with over 104,400 examples drawn from both classical and modern sources.