EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION 57 
THE EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION. 
NCOURAGING news comes from the expedition into 
the Desert of Fayoum for vertebrate fossils. Pro- 
fessor Osborn writes, under date of February 11, 
that help from Lord Cromer and Director H. G. 
Lyons of the Geological Survey has supplied the 
American Museum party with full equipment of 
tents, tanks and other supplies needed for life in the desert. He says, 
in effect: ‘In five days instead of the ten days estimated beforehand 
we were ready, and I despatched Daoud Mahommet, who had been 
out every year with Beadnell and Andrews of the British Museum, 
around by rail to Tamia on the western edge of Fayoum with instruc- 
tions to camp near the most easterly of the bone pits, which is about 
forty miles from the railroad. We left the Gizeh pyramids, twelve 
miles from Cairo, on Thursday morning, January 31, and that evening 
camped near the Sakhara pyramids, the tombs of ancient Memphis. 
Mr. H. T. Farrar, who had been detailed by Doctor Lyons to 
accompany us, joined our party here; so we were eight tents and 
twenty-one camels strong,— quite a big caravan and most picturesque. 
“Friday we went beyond the Dashur pyramid, and the following 
night we camped at Lish’t, where the Metropolitan Museum excava- 
tions are in progress under the direction of Doctor Lythgow. Sunday 
we traversed the desert and reached Tamia on the edge of the Fayoum 
oasis, and Monday night we made our first desert waterless camp. 
Tuesday, February 5, just a month from leaving New York, we reached 
our main desert camp and found that the men who had been sent around 
by rail had arrived two days before. We have secured seventeen diggers 
and eight camels for the transportation of water and supplies, and our 
camp of four tents under the charge of Mr. Granger and Mr. Olsen is 
between the two easterly bone pits. 
“The country has been thoroughly prospected on the surface, but 
careful and extensive quarrying with the thorough methods which we 
have used so successfully in our own West is certain to produce good 
results. We have the best trained and the largest force of Egyptian 
workmen which has ever been at this locality, and our first search has 
produced several apparently new members of the smaller fauna, together 
with excellent jaws and isolated teeth and bones of the larger forms.”’ 
