[1] In some cases a ferruginous (?) stratum in the granite has decomposed the rock with an appearance of its having been burnt. Long exposure of the rock also rots it to a considerable depth, but in the majority of cases where the rock has been removed without wedges or chisels, neither of the above causes can have anything to do with it. [2] An examination of the wedging-off of blocks in the quarries about Aswân shews that often the wedges have acted perfectly, but the block has not been removed. A crowbar acting in each slot would be ample to remove most of these. Can it be that the crowbar or jemmy of metal was not known? Assuming, then, that hammered metal wedges were used and not wooden wedges made to expand by the action of water, it remains to be seen whether the plug-and-feather method, such as is used to-day, was employed, or whether the metal wedges engaged with the stone without the thin sheets of metal on either side which we now call ‘feathers’. The advantages of the plug-and-feather method are that it reduces the width of the slot at the top, leaving it wider below and hence to a large extent preventing the sharp edge of the wedge from touching the bottom of the wedge-slot, and that, since the faces of the feathers are smooth, it tends to {5} obtain the maximum advantage of the lateral force exerted by the wedge in the most evenly distributed way and with a minimum of friction. Now nearly all the ancient wedge-slots appear perfectly smooth inside—just as if they had been polished. This would be a disadvantage in using feathers, as there would be a greater tendency for them to jump out at the first blow. Nothing seems to be gained by polishing. Personally I favour the assumption that the Egyptians used the plug-and-feather, but the question is best left open for the present for lack of conclusive evidence. Photographs of two iron wedges from the Ramesseum are given in PETRIE, _Tools and Weapons_, plate XIII, B 16, 17. They appear to date to about 800 B. C. Feathers, of unknown date, but probably late, are given in the same volume on plate XIII, B 22, 23. It is a bare possibility that the smoothness of the sides of the wedge-slots is due to the fact that the slots were made without chisels, such as by scraping the granite with emery-stone, or that after they had been roughed-out by chisels they were finished by this means.