_Statements not accepted as postulates._—These same witnesses made other statements, which have been accepted or rejected according to the individual views of different theorists. If Herodotus and others after him are rightly interpreted as stating that the Lake Mœris was artificially dug out by human labour, I too must claim the privilege of assuming that they were mistaken. As pointed out at the commencement of Chapter II. of this paper, Herodotus was trying to give an account of what took place more than, at least, 2000 years before, with no records to help him. Under such circumstances, accuracy as to the origin of Lake Mœris was not to be expected in his accounts. Being no engineer, and having a large belief in the marvellous, he might well have supposed the whole oasis artificially dug out. The absence of all signs of the earth resulting from this immense excavation puzzled him, and he asked what had become of it. He was told that it had been carried to the Nile, whose waters dispersed it, and this he _readily believed_, because he had heard of a similar proceeding in another country, where some thieves excavated an underground passage to a king’s treasury, and got rid of the earth resulting from the excavation by throwing it into a river at the outer end of their shaft. This is comparing small and great with a vengeance. The distance of the centre of the Lake Mœris excavation to the Nile would have been 50 kilometres (31 miles), and the quantity of earth to be carried and dispersed by the Nile would have been at least 50,000 million cubic metres. Such a task can scarcely be called similar to a simple mining operation.