It was found that in all the works the sediment passed through was similar in composition to the ordinary Nile mud of the present day, except near the margin of the valley, where thin layers of quartzose sand, such as is sometimes blown from the adjacent desert by violent winds, were observed to alternate with the loam. A remarkable absence of lamination and stratification, the geologist goes on to say, was observed almost universally in the sediment brought up from all points except where the sandy layers above alluded to occurred, the mud closely agreeing in character with the ancient loam of the Rhine. Mr. Horner attributes this want of all indication of successive deposition to the extreme thinness of the film of matter which is thrown down annually on the great alluvial plain during the season of inundation. The tenuity of this layer must indeed be extreme, if the French engineers are tolerably correct in their estimate of the amount of sediment formed in a century, which they suppose not to exceed on the average five inches. It is stated, in other words, that the increase is not more than the twentieth part of an inch each year, or one foot in the period of 240 years. All the remains of organic bodies found during these investigations under Hekekyan Bey belonged to living species. Bones of the ox, hog, dog, dromedary, and ass were not uncommon, but no vestiges of extinct mammalia were found, and no marine shells were anywhere detected. These excavations were on a large scale, in some instances for the first sixteen or twenty-four feet. In these pits, jars, vases, and a small human figure in burnt clay, a copper knife, and other entire articles were dug up; but when water soaking through from the Nile was reached, the boring instrument used was too small to allow of more than fragments of works of art being brought up. Pieces of burnt brick and pottery were constantly being extracted, and from all depths, even where they sank sixty feet below the surface toward the central parts of the valley. In none of these cases did they get to the bottom of the alluvial soil. If it be assumed that the sediment of the valley has increased at the rate of six inches a century, bricks at the depth of sixty feet have been buried 12,000 years. If the increase has been five inches a century, they have lain there during a period of 14,400 years. Lyell states further on that M. Rosiere, in the great French work on Egypt has estimated the rate of deposit of sediment in the delta at two inches and three lines in a century. A fragment of red brick has been excavated a short distance from the apex of the delta at a depth of seventy-two feet. At a rate of deposit of two and a-half inches a century, a work of art seventy-two feet deep must have been buried more than 30,000 years ago. Lyell frankly states, however, that if the boring was made where an arm of the river had been silted up at a time when the apex of the delta