One of the many questions that are frequently asked of the archeologist, and one that is most difficult to answer in a few brief words, concerns the source of his material. There is a sort of mystery that hovers over this modern calling which intrigues the fancy of the average layman. When an archeologist begins to dig in some barren waste of sand and comes upon a buried city that has been missing from the history of men for multiplied centuries, it impresses the casual observer as magic of the blackest kind. There is, however, nothing supernatural or uncommon about these discoveries, although the element of chance does enter in to a minor extent. Some of the greatest and most prolific fields we personally have investigated were brought to our attention when the plow of a farmer cast up a human skull and focussed attention upon that particular field. Generally, however, the sources of archeology are uncovered by hard, patient, painstaking labor. When an able prospector starts out in his search for gold, he is guided by certain known factors that have been derived from the experience of generations. Panning his way up a stream-bed, the keen-eyed hunter of fortune tests every spot that previous experience had taught him might be profitable. He may labor at one thousand barren sites before he strikes gold. If he is in a mountainous country and the placer deposits are not rich enough to pay him to tarry on the spot where the first discovery was made, he will work his way on up the stream, testing site after site for increasing values. If the show of color in his pan suddenly ceases, he knows that he has passed the sources of these wandering fragments. He then goes back to the last point where he found traces of gold and then begins to search the side canyons and branch streams that lead into the main channel. In this way he traces his path step by step to the ledge from which the gold originally came. After laboring weary months, or even years, with heart-breaking disappointment and grim, hard work, if he is fortunate he announces a discovery. The thoughtless immediately credit his good fortune to the goddess of luck and wonder why they also could not be blessed that way.