The spoils collected in Egypt during the time of Napoleon turned the attention of scientists to the Nile. Men began to work to see if they could unravel the past from the evidence afforded by the remains. They began to dig. And, to-day, in the arid places of the earth are many men toiling like navvies, suffering untold discomforts, living in huts and delving in ruins to add to our knowledge of the past. These are the men who are writing history. They are doing it not with a pen, but with spade and pick. People have eyes, yet they see so little. They are not trained to see. To most men a rose is only a flower, but to the exceptional man it is a miracle, for as he gazes at the glorious bloom with its many-tinted petals he visualizes the tiny single rose—the common dog-rose—from which all roses in their wondrous diversity of colour and shape and size and perfume have sprung. Many people regard the earthworm as an annoyance which disfigures the lawn, but Darwin saw in it the lowly creature that is helping to keep the earth sweet and clean by removing the decaying leaves, a blind thing that is continually providing the earth with a layer of new soil in which man may plant his seeds and harvest his crops. Countless earthworms are the servants of men. The diggers toiling in the heat of the sun in Egypt and Mesopotamia and Crete and other places are blessed with this keen vision. Without it they would be useless. If the Rosetta Stone to them were just a broken piece of rock, the romance of the past would not appeal to them. They would not possess the imagination which drives them into the lonely places to find traces of many lost civilizations. When they glimpse a ruin they can close their eyes and see the men quarrying the stones and the masons squaring them and the sculptors carving them; they can see kings consulting their architects, and architects giving orders to the masons; they can see the stone blocks being hauled in place and set one upon another. These and many other things they can see. They are using their eyes to benefit the majority of people, who cannot see these things for themselves. Unfortunately the men who were early interested in the past of Egypt had little to guide them, and they sought for written records. They were all papyri mad. So long as they could find papyri and carry them off to their museums they were content. In the light of our later knowledge we are wont to blame them, but there may be some excuse for them. The Egyptian papyri are wonderful, quite apart from what is written upon them. They are the gift of the Nile and of Egypt to the world. Almost they might be called the first sheets of paper ever made. Papyrus nearly six thousand years old has already been found, and it appears doubtful whether we shall ever be able to trace the name of the first man who thought of using the stem of the papyrus plant in so useful a manner.