In the following month he transferred the seat of his operations to Kouyunjik, with a view to discovering the remainder of Ashur-bani-pal’s library. The work was far from easy owing to the complete state of confusion in which the ruins then were, partly owing to the work of earlier excavators, partly owing to the builders of the bridge at Mosul who had made use of the remains of Assyria’s ancient buildings for the construction of the bridge, and partly owing to the instability of some of Layard’s tunnels, which had the meanwhile collapsed. Here too, the harvest was past and the summer of Assyrian excavations was ended, but the object which the “Daily Telegraph” proprietors had in view was realized in the discovery of another fragment of the Babylonian account of the Deluge, which proved to fill in the chief lacuna in the story. Smith had entertained the hope that this all-important discovery would be an inducement to his financiers to grant an additional sum for the continuation of the work, but they declined. Smith accordingly had reluctantly to set his face westward and return to London, but before the year was out he was on his way back to the Orient, the Trustees of the British Museum having voted £1000 for another expedition thither. He arrived at Mosul on New Year’s Day 1874, and recommenced his quest for tablets, but the time at his disposal was short, his firmân expiring in the ensuing March; this notwithstanding, in the three months spent at Kouyunjik on these two expeditions, he brought to light some three thousand tablets dealing with a variety of different subjects, and providing invaluable material for the student of Babylonian and Assyrian astronomy, theology and chronology. To him is due not only the rediscovery of the Babylonian story of the Flood, but also of portions of the Creation legends, and of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero of Babylonian folk-lore, while to the student of Old Testament History, his discovery of Sargon’s own account of his campaign against the city of Ashdod recorded in the twentieth chapter of Isaiah is of paramount importance. In the spring of 1876 Smith conducted his third and last expedition to Assyria, under the auspices of the British Museum, the value of whose collections he had already so greatly enhanced. But he arrived to find the cholera rampant all over the country, and confusion and disorder reigned everywhere. To excavate under such circumstances was an impossibility, but Smith spared no effort in his futile endeavour to overcome the impossible, boldly facing all dangers and difficulties, but he ultimately succumbed to the disastrous effects of climate and exposure, and died at Aleppo in August 1876, a martyr to the cause of science. George Smith was not only an excavator, but also a scholar, and his scholastic achievements are the more praise-worthy, when it is recollected that he was practically a self-educated man, who by dint of