To these inquiries Mr. Gliddon replied as follows:--"In respect to your first inquiry; I concede at once that the general view of the Greco-Roman antiquity, the oriental traditions collected, often indiscriminately, by the Fathers and the concurring suffrages of all occidental Mythologists, attribute the compound symbol of the Serpent combined with the Mundane Egg to the Egyptians. Modern criticism however, coupled with the application of the tests furnished by Champollion le-Jeune and his followers since 1827 to the hieroglyphics of Egypt, has recognised so many exotic fables and so much real ignorance of Egyptology in the accounts concerning that mystified country, handed down to us from the schools of Alexandria and Byzantium, that at the present hour science treads doubtingly, where but a few years ago it was fashionable to make the most sweeping assertions; and we now hesitate before qualifying, as Egyptian in origin, ideas that belong to the Mythologies of other eastern nations. Classical authority, correct enough when treating on the philosophy and speculative theories of Ptolemaic and Roman Alexandria, is generally at fault when in respect to questions belonging to anterior or Pharaonic times. Whatever we derive through the medium of the Alexandrines, and especially through their successors, the Gnostics, must by the Archæologist be received with suspicion. After this, you will not be surprised if I express doubts as to existence of the myth of the Serpent and Egg in the Cosmogony of the early Egyptians. It is lamentably true that, owing to twenty centuries of destruction, so fearfully wrought out by Mohammed Ali, we do not up to this day possess one tithe of the monuments or papyri bequeathed to posterity by the recording genius of the Khime. It is possible that this myth may have been contained in the vast amount of hieroglyphical literature now lost to us. But the fact that in no instance whatever, amid the myriads of inscribed or sculptured documents extant, does the symbol of the Serpent and the Egg occur, militates against the assumption of this, perhaps Phoenician myth, as originally Egyptian. "The worship of the Serpent," observes Ampêre, "by the Ophites may certainly have a real connection with the choice of the Egyptian symbol by which Divinity is designated in the paintings and hieroglyphics, and which is the Serpent Uraeus (Basilisk royal, of the Greeks, the seraph set up by Moses. Se Ra Ph is the singular of seraphim, meaning Semiticé, splendour, fire, light; emblematic of the fiery disk of the sun and which, under the name of Nehushtan--"Serpent Dragon"--was broken up by the reforming Hezekiah. 2 Kings, 18, 4); or with the serpent with wings and feet, which we see represented in the Funeral Rituals; but the serpent is everywhere in the Mythologies and Cosmogonies of the East, and we cannot be assured that the serpent of the Ophites (any more than that emitting or encircling the