The Skill of the Ancients in Well-Boring — Present State of the Ancient Wells — Ancient Methods of Boring — Wooden Casing — Introduction of Machinery by Egyptian Government — Native Methods of Boring at the Present Day — Cleaning of Wells — Divers and their Work — Recent Boring Operations — American Steam-driven Boring Rigs. Olympiodorus, writing more than 1,500 years ago, remarked that the inhabitants of the oases were celebrated for their skill in sinking wells. Although at the present day a large proportion of the very ancient wells are completely sanded up, or have suffered great deterioration in respect of their flows, there are still many examples to be met with where bores, certainly between 2,000 and 3,000 years old, are still producing strong discharges of water at the rate of hundreds of gallons a minute by day and by night. Although scores of the old wells have been cleaned out and repaired in modern times, not a single instance has come under my notice of the finding of implements used by the well-borers of ancient times. We know, however, that the bores were in practically all cases lined to a considerable depth with wooden casing, manufactured from the wood of the doum-palm, date-palm, or acacia, which doubtless were then, as now, cultivated in large numbers in the oasis. The timber was carefully fashioned into the required lengths and fitted together by water-tight joints. During the cleaning operations to which many of the old wells have been subjected in modern times, portions of the ancient casing have frequently been extracted, and some of the examples which I have examined, especially those made of acacia, proved to be in an excellent state of preservation. The wood of this particular tree—‘sunt,’ as it is locally called—has remarkably enduring qualities both in and out of water, though not when subjected to alternations of wet and dry. Still, that it should in some cases have retained its original qualities since Roman times is noteworthy. It is quite evident, from a comparison of the ancient timbering and casing with those manufactured and used by the inhabitants of the oases at the present day, that the methods of well-sinking in modern times are in many respects identical with those anciently employed. This is especially the case in sinking through the superficial strata—_i.e._, those overlying the actual beds in which the artesian water is held—though of the methods formerly practised for carrying the bore through the Artesian-water Sandstones nothing is known.