It is, then, evident, that he was unacquainted with any buildings of hewn stone earlier than the time of Sesortosis. No surprise need be felt at this. Sesortosis reigned more than 3,000 years before the time of Manetho. Let us recall what is the effect of 3,000 years upon ordinary stone buildings in a country that has, during that period, been growing and prospering. Our Saxon forefathers used stone largely in building. One thousand years only have passed: and now there is not a building in the country we can point to, and say with certainty, that it was raised by their hands. There are a few doubtful exceptions in the form of church towers. But these, if authentic, are exceptions of the kind which prove the rule: for when everything else disappeared, they could have been preserved only by a combination of chances so rare that it did not occur in one out of ten thousand cases. It was much the same after five hundred years had passed. The Roman world was covered, in the time of Constantine, with magnificent cities and villas. But how many of the houses that were then inhabited are now standing? The reasons of this are evident. First, there is the ever-acting disintegration of natural causes. Whatever man erects upon the surface of the earth, nature is ever afterwards busy in reducing to the common level. Then comes fire, the best of servants, but the worst of masters, which no dwelling-house can be expected to escape for a thousand years. Earthquakes, too, and war have, in any long series of years, to be credited with much destructive work. These are all in the end complete undoers of man’s handiwork. But I am disposed to assign the greatest amount of obliteration to the ever-changing fashions and wants of man himself. The houses of one generation are not suited to the tastes and requirements of the generations that succeed. They must therefore be pulled down to make way for what men wish to have. Perhaps, they become quarries to supply the materials needed for the new buildings. Those who act in this way are only doing what their predecessors did, and what their successors will do. Palaces, and the chief public buildings, in a city are, from a variety of causes, transferred to new sites; and the cities, of which they must be the centres, must correlate themselves to the sites of the new buildings. Or the capital, or city, itself, may, from, again, a variety of causes, be transferred to an entirely new site. In either case more or less of the old city is no longer inhabited. Sometimes the old materials are wanted, sometimes the ground upon which the deserted buildings are standing is needed for cultivation.