taken only at two epochs-those of the twelfth and the nineteenth dynasties. They are also corroborated by the inscriptions found at the first cataract and deciphered by Mr. Wilbour, relating that Usertesen I had cleared a way up the rapids, in order to proceed to the conquest of the "vile negro," supplemented by a text of Rameses II, which speaks of the clearing and opening again of this water way. Prof. Mahaffy and his companions found mastabas near Anibe, in which wall paintings of the middle empire were uncovered without trouble.

A study of the ancient Egyptian pigments has been made by Dr. William J. Russell, who finds that the red pigment used by the artists from the earliest times is a native oxide of iron, a hæmatite. Most of the large pieces found by Mr. Petrie are an oölitic hæmatite. By experiment, it was found that these pieces yielded a paint which could be readily applied with a brush, possessing remarkable adhesive properties; and it resembles exactly the red used in the different kinds of Egyptian paintings. Besides these usual reds there are others, finer in color and smoother in texture, which were apparently made from carefully selected pieces of hæmatite, specially prepared. The most common yellow was a native ocher, the applied colors of which show no evidence of having changed. Some of the specimens of the very earliest colors of which the exact history is known appear to be an artificial mixture of these two colors, producing an orange. These samples were found on a tomb at Medum, of Nefermat, a high officer of the court of Senefru, of the fourth dynasty, the characters and figures on which are incised and filled with colored pastes, the use of which was a special device of the occupant of Nefermat's tomb; for it is inscribed that "he made this to his gods in his unspoilable writing." All the pastes used are dull in color, consisting entirely of native minerals-hæmatite, ocher, malachite, carbon, and plaster of Paris. Another yellow pigment much brighter in color-orpiment, a sulphide of arsenic-was used when a brilliant yellow was required, but has not been found in monuments earlier than the eighteenth dynasty. Gold was largely used, with exceedingly good effect, being laid in very thin sheets on a yellow ground, exactly as is done at the present day. While the mineral chessylite was known as a blue, the blue color most used was an artificial pigment, an imperfect glass or frit, made by heating together silica, an alkali, and copper ore. The excellent quality of the specimens examined denotes that the materials were selected with, prepared, and mixed, and that definite quantities. of each were carefully taken, this necessitating the accurate measuring or weighing of each constituent, for a slight error at any stage of the work would make the substance unfit for use as a pigment. An early application of the fundamental law of chemistry-combination in definite proportions-was required. The amount of copper ore added determined the color. If there was too little alkali, a noncoherent sand resulted; if there was too much, a hard, stony mass was formed, unsuitable for a pigment. Then, the heating had to be precisely tempered. These difficulties were all avoided, and a frit

was formed which exactly answered all the necessary requirements. By means of comparatively small alterations in the mixture or the heating the frits could be obtained of a green color. All the blue frits were unchangeable in hue. The pink, in its various shades, was an artificial pigment of vegetable origin. It was usually gypsum stained with organic coloring matter-madder or munjeet. For white the Egyptians used gypsum or carbonate of lime, of which they had supplies of remarkably pure quality.

Palestinian.-The Palestine Exploration Fund obtained from the Turkish Government early in the year permission to carry on archæological excavations in Jerusalem for two years.

In the excavations of the walls of Jerusalem, Dr. Bliss, of the Palestine Exploration Fund, besides making several interesting discoveries at a higher level, has found a gate which is clearly a part of the earliest wall, having thus opened the foundations of the times of the kings. Four large square towers have also been uncovered near the same corner of the wall. The recent discovery by Herr Schick of the gate called in the twelfth century the Leper's Gate, defining its situation with reference to other points, has an important bearing on the question of the location of the sepulchre.

A very ancient palimpsest manuscript of the old Syriac version of the gospels discovered and photographed by Mrs. Agnes S. Lewis in St. Catherine's Convent, Mount Sinai, in 1892, has been transcribed and published at the Cambridge University Press. The photographs taken by Mrs. Lewis were identified by the late Prof. Bensly and Mr. Burkitt as containing a text closely allied to that published by Cureton in 1858. The palimpsest, which is now reproduced line for line as far as it is possible to read it, was deciphered by these two scholars and by Mr. Rendel Harris during a visit of forty days to the convent of St. Catherine in the early part of 1893. A considerable number of leaves have been lost from the manuscript, and many places are no longer legible, but the portions deciphered amount to about three quarters of the whole. When first found, the writing was supposed to date from the earlier part of the second century, but this supposition is not either confirmed or disproved. The colophon is illegible, and the internal evidence is scanty, but there is no doubt that the codex is of great antiquity. The manuscript presents several interesting variations from other versions, among the most important of which are the omission of the disputed verses from the end of St. Mark's Gospel, and passages that bear apparent evidence of efforts to eliminate the dogma of the miraculous conception of Jesus. St. Mark's Gospel ends at the words "for they were afraid " (verse 8), and immediately after occurs the note, "The Gospel of Mark is ended." In Matthew i, 16, the reading occurs: "Jacob begat Joseph; Joseph, to whom was betrothed Mary the virgin, begat Jesus who is called Christ." Other indications occur that it was the intention of the writer of the codex to represent Jesus as the son of Joseph. But this intention was only partially carried out and the occurrence of the word virgin, which in the Syriac is always used in its strict

sense, testifies to the presence of this word in the earliest form of the version. Moreover, Matthew i, 18, which states how "before they came together" Mary was found to be with child by the Holy Ghost, and verses 22 and 23, which quote Isaiah to prove that the Messiah must be born of a virgin, remain unchanged. Assyrian and Babylonian.—The work begun by Dr. Peters, of the University of Pennsylvania Expedition, in the ruins of Niffer, in Babylonia, was taken up by Mr. Haynes in the spring of 1893. In the first ten months 8,000 inscribed clay tablets and fragments, and other objects, were taken out from the débris. The digging was carried below the levels of the débris from the time of Sargon I, of 3800 B. C., and inscriptions were found in this deepest stratum. This promises revelations of a still earlier period of Babylonian civilization than have before been in our possession.

In his popular lecture on "Geologies and Floods," at the meeting of the British Association, Prof. W. J. De Sollas undertook to determine by comparison of the ancient legends, particularly the Chaldean and the Chinese, the real character of the Noachian Deluge. The Chaldean legend, representing that the ship of Sitnapastim, the Chaldean Noah, starting from Sunippak, near the mouth of the Euphrates, grounded on the mountains of Nizir, about 240 miles up the Tigris valley, points to a journey upstream, which is inconsistent with the supposition of a pluvial origin of the Deluge. The supposition of Suess, who looks for the cause of the flood in a great sea wave, produced partly by an earthquake and partly by a hurricane blowing up from the Persian Gulf, is pronounced untenable, because the legend contains no reference to an earthquake, the formerly supposed reference proving to be a mistranslation, and because cyclones do not prevail in the Persian Gulf. Even if there had been an exceptional hurricane, it could not have carried the waves to Bagdad, 154 feet above sea level: much less to the Nizir hills, where the ark is said to have been stranded, where the floor of the Tigris valley is at least 600 or 700 feet above sea level. Under these circumstances we should acquaint ourselves more closely with the historical character of the Deluge story. The Gizdubar epic, of which the Chaldean legend of the flood is a part, is, unfortunately, full of obviously unveracious statements, or at least of poetic exaggerations. Yet, by making allowance for these, the story may be reduced to commonplace proportions.

The identification of the Gizdubar legend with that of Heracles is a matter of great importance, for, if the Greeks have borrowed the epic, they would not be likely to neglect the episode, and accordingly we find them in possession of the Deluge legend of Deucalion. The Egyptians have sun stories of their own, but as they are without that of Gizdubar, so they are silent about the Deluge. The Nile does not cause calamitous overflowings like those of the Tigris, and consequently the Egyptians possess no Deluge legends of native growth. In China the case is different. The Yellow river, "the curse of China," has always produced disastrous deluges; and in the third Schu of the Canon of Yao, who reigned somewhere about 2357 B. C., we read that the Ti said: "Prince of the Four Mountains, destructive in their overflowing are the waters of the flood. In their wide extension they

inclose the mountains and cover the great heights, threatening the heaven with their floods, so that the lower people is unruly and murmur. Where is a capable man whom I can employ this evil to overlabored in vain, whereupon another engineer, Yü, come?" Khwan was engaged, but for nine years he was called in. Within eight years he completed great works; he thinned the woods, regulated the streams, dammed them and opened their mouths, provided the people with food, and acted as a great benethe ornate deceptions of legend to the sober truth of factor of the state. It is refreshing thus to pass from history, and if the famous Chaldean fable could be reduced to equally simple language we should probably find it describing very similar events, or events just as little astonishing as those of the straightforward Chinese Schú. History fails to furnish evidence of any phenomenon which in the geologic sense of the word can be called "catastrophic"; and geology has no need to return to the cataclysms of its

youth.

Indian. A search by Dr. Fuhrer at Sanchi for missing pieces of the inscriptions published by Sir A. Cunningham has resulted in the recovery of almost all the texts recorded in that author's Bhilsa Topes, and of a large number of others hitherto unknown. The most important of the documents recovered is the fragment of Asoka's edict, of which Sir A. Cunningham had already given two facsimiles. Two other texts contain imprecations against the impious ones who may despoil the stupa.

A collection of old Sanskrit manuscripts found by an Afghan merchant near Kuglar, about 60 miles south of Yarkand, has been made accessible to scholars through the offices of the Rev. F. Weber, a Moravian missionary at Ladak. They appear to have been recovered bound in their original binding. They consist of fragments of 76 leaves, which can be assigned to 9 different parts. No part is complete, and no leaf is complete. One of the longest parts is an astronomical treatise of an archaic type, probably of a time between the third century B. C. and the second century A. D. It appears to belong to the last stage of the Vedic period of Sanskrit literature. Another part (7 leaves) appears to be a stotra, or hymn, in honor of Siva's wife, Parvati, after the manner of the Puranas. Another part is a kosha, or Sanskrit vocabulary, which seems to supply a number of new words. Most of the remainder seem to be Buddhistic charms. The language is sometimes a barbarous mixture of Sanskrit and Pali, and sometimes the "mixed Sanskrit" which anciently prevailed as a literary language in northwestern India and the countries beyond.

At Mahavellipore, the city of the great god Bali, in India, which was inhabited previous to the seventh century by a people of the Jain region, and afterward by worshipers of Brahma, are a number of subterranean temples cut in the rock, and monolithic pagodas with relief sculptures in the granite, which are almost unique in their way. Two miles from Mahavellipore, near some groups of fishermen's huts called SalawanKuppam, are some still more curious. They are Pudal, and are situated on a low dune, at a conenormous blocks of granite known as Idaiyan siderable elevation above the level of the sea. In the granite block represented in the figure (Fig. 5) a kind of niche has been hollowed in the rock, flanked by two fantastic animals that seem

to serve the purpose of caryatides in supporting an entablature. There was probably once a statue of a divinity in this niche, as steps have

FIG. 5.-SCULPTURED MONOLITH OF SALAWAN-KUPPAM. NATURE BY M. ALBERT TISSANDIER.

been cut out to give access to it and aid the faithful in prostrating themselves. This central motive is surrounded by ornaments of a remarkable composition. The sculptures form a sort of aureole, adorned with heads of fabulous lions, with Simhas, which, according to the poetic ideas of the Hindus, belong to the paradise of Vishnu. By the side of this primitive sanctuary, on the same rock, where its height is least, are observed rude, indefinite sculptures of elephants bearing on their backs little statues of the gods situated in square niches cut in the granite, and a very roughly executed horse. According to Tamil or Malabar inscriptions which were discovered in the portico of a little temple near Idaiyan Pudal, and dedicated to Brahma, these sanctuaries were cut in the reign of one of the principal kings of the Chola dynasty, at the beginning of the twelfth century A. D.

Chinese.-Tracings were taken by one of the directors of the Musée Guimet, Paris, during a recent journey through northwestern China, of intaglio sculptures similar to those on the Egyptian monuments. The sculptures are represented as being of great interest to students of epigraphy and Chinese art, as they are found on public monuments and tombs dating back two centuries before Christ.

Tasmanian.-A collection of the rude stone implements of the Tasmanians exhibited before the British Archæological Institute in March, 1892, indicate that the station of that people was in the paleolithic stage, or that of unground implements, and consequently below that of the prehistoric tribes in Europe of the period of the mammoth. Fragments or rough flakes of chert or mudstone, never edged by grinding, but only by chipping off one surface with another stone, and grasped in the hand without any handle, served the simple purpose of notching trees for climbing, cutting up game, and scraping spears and clubs. The Tasmanians appear to have kept

up this rudimentary art till the present century, and their state of civilization thus becomes a guide by which to judge of that of the prehistoric cave and drift men, whose life in England and France depended on similar though better implements. The Tasmanians, though perhaps in arts the rudest of savages, were at most only a stage below other savages, and do not disclose any depths of brutality. The usual moral and social rules prevailed among them. Their language was efficient and even copious; they had a well-marked religion, in which the spirits of ancestors were looked to for help in trouble, and the echo was called the "talking shadow." Such facts make it clear that neither antiquity nor savagery reaches to really primitive stages of human life, which belong to a remoter past.

DRAWN FROM

ARGENTINE REPUBLIC, a federal republic in South America. The President is elected for six years by an electoral college composed of twice as many representatives from the 14 provinces as their Senators and Deputies combined. Each province elects two Senators, and the capital also two. The Deputies are elected by direct suffrage, in the proportion of 1 to 20,000 of population, for the term of four years, one half retiring every two years. Every member of Congress receives a salary of $8,400. The President appoints all civil, military, and judicial officers. Dr. Luis Saenz Peña assumed the office of President on Oct. 16, 1892. The provinces elect their governors and legislatures, and are independent in all matters not reserved to the National Government by the Constitution, which is modeled after that of the United States. The President selects his Cabinet, consisting of five Secretaries of State. It was composed as follows in the beginning of 1894: Interior, M. Quintana; Foreign Affairs, V. Virasoro; Finances, Dr. J. A. Terry; Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction, E. Costa; Army and Navy, Gen. L. Campos.

Area and Population.-The area of the provinces is 515,700 square miles; of the Misiones territory. 23,932 square miles; of Formosa and Chaco, 125,612 square miles; of the Pampas territory, 191,842 square miles of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, 268,000 square miles. The population was estimated at the end of 1892 to be 4,257,000, including 250,000 in the territories. Buenos Ayres, the capital, on June 30, 1893, had 567,408 inhabitants. The number of immigrants in 1892 was 73,294, and of emigrants 43,853. Of 39,973 who arrived at the port of Buenos Ayres, 27,850 were Italians, 5,650 Spaniards, and the rest French, Russians, Germans, and Austrians.

Finances.-The revenue for 1892 was $117.900,000, and the expenditure $124.600,000 in paper. The foreign gold debt is $231,662,670, on which the interest and amortization is $16,042,077. The late Finance Minister, Dr. Romero, made an arrangement with respect to the funded