the crops of rice, dates, barley, and wheat, which form the staple food-supplies of the inhabitants. Cut off by a waterless desert, these people have little intercourse with the outside world, except for a few weeks in the early winter months, when they dispose of their surplus date-crop to the Bedawin traders who cross the desert with droves of camels from the Nile Valley. The dates are usually paid for in cash, ready-money being required in order to meet the annual taxes levied by the Egyptian Government. Practically the only food-stuffs imported consist of such commodities as tea, coffee, and sugar, which are used sparingly, and regarded as luxuries even by the better classes. It is evident, therefore, that the inhabitants rely almost entirely for subsistence on the products they are able to raise by their own toil and industry. Owing to there being no rainfall, the acreage of land which can be put under crops depends absolutely on the amount of water available for irrigation by wells. The total yield of the latter has, we know, fluctuated to a considerable extent at different times, and one may surmise that, could figures be obtained giving the number of inhabitants and the volume of the water-supply for different periods during the last 5,000 years, a remarkably constant ratio would be observable between the two. Taxes are levied by the Egyptian Government on both date-trees and wells. Over 60,000 adult palms exist in the oasis, each one being subject to a yearly tax of 1½ piastres (about 3½d.). The output or yield of a well is, for purposes of taxation, determined in a somewhat rough-and-ready manner by a method which appears to have been in use for a number of generations. Whenever a new bore is completed, or an old well requires remeasurement, all the most influential personages in the oasis, headed by the Omda or chief of Kharga village, armed with a number of primitive appliances, solemnly proceed to the spot.