Transcriber’s note: Table of Contents added by Transcriber. Boldface is indicated by =equals signs=; italics by _underscores_. CONTENTS Recent Years of Egyptian Exploration 625 The Gold Sands of Cape Nome 633 A State Official on Excessive Taxation 645 Latest Developments With the X Rays 659 A Hundred Years of Chemistry 673 The Science of Art Form 685 Steam Turbines and High-speed Vessels 696 A Survival of Mediæval Credulity 706 Genuine Starch Factories 716 Trade Corporations in China 722 Editor’s Table 728 Fragments of Science 731 Minor Paragraphs 737 Publications Received 639 Index 741 Established by Edward L. Youmans APPLETONS’ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS VOL. LVI NOVEMBER, 1899, TO APRIL, 1900 NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. APPLETONS’ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. APRIL, 1900. RECENT YEARS OF EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. BY W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON. Familiar as we are with the methods of science--exact observation and record, comparison, and the strict weeding out of hypotheses--yet such methods have only gradually been applied to various branches of learning. Geometry became a science long ago, zoölogy much later, medicine only a generation or two ago, and the history of man is but just being developed into a science. What was done for other sciences by the pioneers of the past is now being done in the present day for archæology. We now have to devise methods, to form a notation for recording facts, and to begin to lay out our groundwork of knowledge. With very few exceptions, it may be said of Egypt that there is no publication of monuments before this century that is of the least use, no record or dating of objects before 1860, and no comparison or study of the history of classes of products before 1890. Thus, the work of recent years in Egyptology is really the history of the formation of a science.