ON RECENT INVESTIGATIONS IN MOAB AND EDOM. 249 
day, and I hope we may send him a message of congratulation 
from the Victoria Institute. 
With regard to Kerak, it is very interesting, I think, to see how 
the old and new systems are both face to face and side by side. 
In the new we have medical missioners, under the Church 
Missionary Society, doing most excellent work in that place. 
With regard to some of the names mentioned to-day, such as 
T'ophel and others, one’s mind naturally goes back to the Ist 
chapter of Deuteronomy, where you have certain localities pointed 
out in connection with the camping-ground immediately before the 
people crossed the Jordan in a westerly direction. Sometimes, 
perhaps, disappointment is felt that all these places have not been 
exactly identified ; but one has to remember that there were two 
million people at least—men, women and children—and you cannot 
camp two million people in a village; so that all the writer could 
do would be to give certain locations as the main centres of the 
camping-ground, That probably accounts for the peculiar termin- 
ology which you get in this early account. 
The only other point which I should like to know about, and 
which I have often been puzzled over, is with regard to that vast 
desert to the east of the region which Sir Charles Wilson has 
referred to and to the west of the Huphrates. Was it always a 
desert, and will it always be a desert? Is it possible that under 
any special circumstances that land can be cultivated? — In the 
book of Ezekiel it appears, from the ordinary reading of the book, 
that the tribes are to have long strips of territory running right 
across that very region. Of course we can explain it symbolically ; 
but still one would like to know if it is possible, under any 
circumstances, to explain it literally. 
It is delightful to hear that the Turks are doing a little good 
there. Ihave not heard a good word for the Turks for I dare 
not say how many years. If the Turks could be put to cultivate 
that region it would keep them out of the mountains and enable 
them to do some good work as a little set-off against the bad work 
they have done in certain regions which we know about so well. 
[ Applause. | 
Professor E. Hunt.—I join with Canon Girdlestone in expressing 
my great pieasure and gratitude to Sir Charles Wilson for his 
address to us this evening, and particularly at the present time, 
when, as is known probably to some of you, he has two gallant 
