It was not until after the winter of 1873-74, when the great German expedition, under the leadership of Rohlfs, with Zittel, Jordan, and Ascherson as geologist, topographer, and botanist respectively, visited all the chief oases of the eastern portion of the Libyan Desert, that any connected scientific observations of importance, other than those dealing with archæology, were published. The Rohlfs expedition astronomically determined the positions of selected points in each oasis, and produced a map on which the principal villages and the approximate limits of the depressions were correctly shown. Zittel at the same time worked out the general relations of the different geological formations found in the country, described their main divisions, and indicated approximately the areas occupied by them. So thoroughly, indeed, did this expedition accomplish its mission that its results have formed a sound basis for all later scientific work in this part of Egypt. As the voluminous memoirs recording the observations of the members of the Rohlfs expedition are easily obtainable at the present day, it is unnecessary here to do more than briefly refer to a few of their more general remarks on the oasis of Kharga. In his ‘Three Months in the Libyan Desert,’ Gerhard Rohlfs states that he and his companions travelled from Dakhla Oasis by the Ain Amûr road, and were greeted at Kharga village by Schweinfurth, who was for the time being residing in a disused alum factory. Rohlfs spent only two or three days in the neighbourhood of Kharga, and remarks that the expedition did not undertake detailed work on the antiquities, as the latter had already been so competently described by Hoskins and other previous explorers; a few corrections and amendments of published accounts of the temple were, however, made. The splendid preservation of the Christian necropolis, with its mausolea of unburnt brick, is remarked upon, and Rohlfs adds that, in beauty and ingenious arrangement, this burial-ground can only be excelled by the necropolis of Cyrene. Rohlfs describes Kharga village as being pretty from a distance, but remarks that the narrow dirty alleys are the pictures of laziness and poverty; the streets are covered in for protection against the rays of the sun, a common practice throughout the Sahara.