An excellent rule in excavating is never to dig anywhere without some definite aim. Form at least some expectation of what may be found; and so soon as the general clue to the arrangement is known, have clearly in the mind what you expect to find, and what is the purpose of every separate man’s work. One may be following the outside of a fortification, another trenching across it to find its thickness, another sinking a pit inside it to find the depth of the soil, another clearing a room, or trenching to find the limits of the town, or removing a rubbish deposit layer by layer. Unless just beginning work on a very featureless site, the aimless trenching or pitting is merely an excuse for a lazy mind. Far better have some theory or working hypothesis, and labour to prove it to be either right or wrong, than simply remain in expectancy. When you know what to look for, the most trivial indications, which otherwise would seem to be nothing, become of great importance and attract the eye. And the workmen should be encouraged to know what to expect beneath the surface, as it prevents their destroying the evidences. A vertical junction a few inches high, clean sand on one side and earth on the other, will lead to tracing the whole plan of a destroyed temple; a little patch of sand in the ground will produce a foundation deposit to your hands, and give the age of a building which has vanished; a slightly darker soil in a trench will show you the wall of a town which you are seeking; some bricks laid with mud instead of sand in a pyramid will point the way to the sepulchre. A beginner is vastly disappointed that some great prize does not turn up after a week or two of work; while all the time he is probably not noticing or thinking about material for historical results that is lying before him all the time. Perhaps in some place nothing whatever may be found that would be worth sixpence in the antiquity market; and yet the results from walls, and plans, and pottery, and measurements, may be what historians have been longing to know about for years before.