But let us imagine that the reservoir and the lake are both completed and full of water, and that it is the first of April. Lake Mœris will be opened on to the Nile and give all the water needed in that month, while the Assouan Reservoir will be maintained at its full level. In May, Lake Mœris will give nearly the whole supply and the reservoir will give a little. In June the lake will give little and the reservoir much; while in July the lake will give practically nothing and the reservoir the whole supply. Working together in this harmonious manner, the reservoir and the lake, which are the true complements of each other, will easily provide the whole of the water needed for Egypt. The Wady Rayan is a depression in the deserts to the south of the Fayoum and separated from the Fayoum by a limestone ridge. In 1888 Col. Western recommended it very strongly as a reservoir. In this he was supported by Col. Ross, the first Inspector General of irrigation. On Col. Western’s leaving Egypt, the study was entrusted to me, and Messrs. Hewat and Clifton deputed to make a final project. The Wady Rayan project, with its plans and estimates, was published by the Egyptian Government in 1894. As I said before, I was reluctantly compelled to reject its adoption owing to the one radical defect already described. That defect will have been completely removed by the completion of the Assouân Reservoir, when it will be possible to undertake the construction of the modern lake Mœris. The question of Lake Mœris has interested the world for centuries. For the ancients it was one of the world’s seven wonders. Sir Hanbury Brown, in his book on the “Fayoum and Lake Mœris,” has collected all the information available about the lake, and after a thorough examination of the question has declared in favour of the Wady Rayan being converted into a modern Lake Mœris. Herodotus, writing about B.C. 450, was the first to describe the lake: “Now the Labyrinth being such as I have described, the lake named that of Mœris, causes still greater astonishment, on the bank of which the Labyrinth was built. “The water in the lake is not derived from local sources, for the earth in that part is excessively dry and waterless, but it is brought in from the Nile by a canal. It takes six months filling and six months flowing back. During the six months of the return flow, it yields a talent of silver every day to the treasury, and during the flow twenty minæ for the fish.” Strabo, writing in B. C. 20, remarks: “It has also a remarkable lake called the Lake of Mœris, large enough to be called a sea, and resembling the open sea in colour.