II. Under the second head, accounts of exploration and excavation, come Dickins’s Reports of his work in the exploration of Laconia and Sparta. In the years 1904–8 the British School of Athens was engaged in the interesting task, assigned to it by the Greek Government, of making a careful survey of Laconia, and trying by excavation what could be recovered of the monuments and history of ancient Sparta. Mr. R. M. Dawkins, the Director of the School, was in charge of the excavations, and various parts of the work were assigned to students of the school, A. J. B. Wace, J. P. Droop, A. M. Woodward, Dickins, and others. In the _Annual_ of the school, vols. xi to xiv, there are several papers written by Dickins, one on excavation at Thalamae in Laconia, others on the excavation of the shrine of Athena Chalkioikos at Sparta, and the works of art found on the site. It is this temple and that of Artemis Orthia which have yielded the most important results of the undertaking. But as the work was one executed in common by a group of students who worked into one another’s hands, it is not desirable or possible to separate the threads in Dickins’s hands from the others. III. Men of strong originality usually produce more satisfactory work on subjects as to which they have gradually acquired first-hand knowledge than on subjects which they have merely taken up as a task. This was notably the case with Dickins. His best papers by far are those dealing with Sparta and Lycosura, places where he worked on definite lines, and where he reached important results. His paper on the art of Sparta[127] is extremely valuable; and as it is hidden in a place little visited by classical scholars, it is desirable to speak of it in some detail. There will before long appear a work on the results of the excavations of the British School of Athens at Sparta, a work which will contain some contributions by Dickins: and of course it is possible that the excavators will modify the views set forth ten years ago. But meantime the paper in question is the best summary existing of the results of the excavation in relation to Spartan art.