A find by Frobenius during his excavations at Ilife seems to support these conclusions. For of all the objects found by him at that site, his most important discovery he declares to be a bronze head, which he thinks is that of an ancient African god. The head wears a diadem with a staff. From the very tip of the diadem staff to the chin the object measures thirty-one and a quarter inches. "It is cast in what we call _cere perdue_, or hollow cast, and is indeed finely chased, suggesting the finest Roman examples. The setting of the lips, the shape of the ears, the contour of the face, all prove, if separately examined, the perfection of a work of true art, which the whole of it obviously is."[48] Some attention may now be given to the method by which these objects were made and to the question of their age and origin. In a report before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in February, 1898,[49] Mr. C. H. Read and Mr. O. M. Dalton described these objects as having been cast in moulds. They testified as to the difficulties attendant upon such methods in sculpture, announcing that they had "been overcome with the certainty and skill which only long practice of a familiar art could produce. This alone goes to prove that at whatever period the objects were made they were produced by a people long acquainted with the art of casting metals."[50] Their report continues: "The method by which the objects were produced can only be that known as _cere perdue_ process. By no other is it conceivable that so much extravagant relief and elaborately undercut detail could be represented with success. The process may be described in a very few words. The model is first made in wax, and every part of its surface is then covered with fine clay; the whole work is then hidden in a mass of clay. An outlet is then made for the wax to escape, and the mass is then heated until the wax has melted out, leaving, of course, a mould of exactly the design of the wax in the original state. The metal is then poured in and fills every hollow space left by the wax." Read and Dalton, as well as Ling Roth, testify that when casting objects in the round, or any object for that matter, where there was considerable internal bulk or projections, a core of sand was used as a base and the wax and clay respectively placed over this. This method, aside from insuring lightness, also saved considerable metal. Ling Roth, in this connection, points out that "the ancient Etruscans and Greeks made their castings solid without any sand core, while the Beni were evidently adept in the superior method practiced by the ancient Egyptians."[51] Read and Dalton likewise conclude that "this _cere perdue_ process is that by which many of the finest Italian bronzes of the best period were produced."[52] Thus it is that we find the Negroes of West Africa, as Dalton concludes, "using with familiarity and success a complicated