In Sicily the case is different; the pointed arch there never was either a vaulting or constructive expedient—it was simply a mode of eking out, by its own taller form and by stilting, the limited height of the Roman pillars, which they found and used so freely. It is the same description of arch as that used in the construction of the mosque El-Aksah at Jerusalem in the 8th century; at Cairo in rebuilding that of Amrou in the 9th or 10th and in El-Azhar and other mosques of that city. As such it was used currently in Sicily by the Saracens, and in Palermo and elsewhere became so essential a part of the architecture of the day that it was employed as a matter of course in the churches; but it was not introduced by the Normans, nor was it carried by them from Sicily into France, and, except so far as already stated, it had no influence on the arts of France. In fact there is no connection, either ethnographically or architecturally, between the Sicilian pointed arch and the French; and beyond the accident of the broken centre they have nothing in common. Although, therefore, it can hardly again be used as evidence in the question of the invention of the pointed arch, the architecture of Sicily deserves a better monography than it has yet been made the subject of. It must, however, be written by some one intimately familiar with the Byzantine, Saracenic, and Romanesque styles. To any one so qualified, Sicily would afford the best field in Europe for tracing the influence of race and climate on architecture: for nowhere, owing in a great measure to its insular position, can the facts be more easily traced, or the results more easily observed.