The obscurity in which it was previously involved seems to be removed by a happy discovery that the excellent Linant, the Pasha’s hydraulic engineer, has lately made. Up to this time it was only agreed that the lake lay somewhere in the Faiûm. As there is at the present time in this remarkable half-oasis only a single lake, the Birqet el Qorn, lying in its most distant part, this was of course taken to be Lake Mœris; there appeared to be no other solution to the question. Now its great fame was expressly founded upon the fact that it was artificial (Herodotus says that it was excavated), and of immense utility, filled at the time of the overflow of the Nile, and at low water running off again by the canal, on one side toward the lands of the Faiûm, on the other, in its backward course, it waters the region of Memphis, and yielding a most lucrative fishery at the double sluices near the end of the Faiûm. Of all these qualities, however, to the annoyance of antiquarians and philologers, the Birqet el Qorn did not possess a single one. It is not artificial, but a natural lake, that is partly fed by the water of the Jussuf canal; its utility is as good as non-existent; no fishing-boat enlivens the hard and desert-circled water mirror, as the brackish water contains scarcely any fish, and is not even favourable to the vegetation at the shores; when the Nile is high and there is plenty of water flowing in, it does swell, but it is by far too deep to allow a drop of the water that flows into it to flow out again; the whole province must be buried beneath the floods ere this could find a passage back again to the valley, as the artificially-deepened rock gorge by the Bahr Jussuf, branching from the Nile at a distance of forty miles to the south, lies higher than the whole oase. The _niveau_ of the Birqet el Qorn now lies seventy feet below the point at which the canal flows in, and can never have risen much higher.[36] This is proved by the ruins of ancient temples lying upon its shores. Just as little do the statements tally that inform us that on its shores were situated the Labyrinth and the metropolis Arsinoë, now Medînet el Faiûm. Linant has discovered mighty mile-long dams, of ancient solid construction, which form the boundary between the upper part of the shell-formed convex basin of the Faiûm, and the more remote and less elevated portion. According to him, these could only be intended to restrain an artificially-constructed lake, which, however, since the dams have long since been broken through, lies perfectly dry; this lake he considers to be Mœris. I must confess that the whole, after his personal information, impressed me with the idea that it was a most fortunate discovery, and one that would save us many fruitless researches; and the examination of the region has now quite solved every doubt of mine as to the accuracy of this judgment; I consider it an immoveable fact, Linant’s essay is now being printed, and