ON USEFUL AND ORNAMENTAL STONES OF ANCIENT EGYPT. 287 



able to tell us something in further explanation of the immense 

 quantities of siliceous matter in these beds. I can only say that 

 I have heard with great pleasure Sir Wm. Dawson's Paper and 

 I regard him as a great authority on the geology of the East, and 

 I recommend anyone who can to get his " Modern Science in 

 Bible Lands," which is a most excellent book. 



Professor Hull. — I will venture to make what answer I can to 

 those who have spoken. I need not say that I listened with great 

 pleasure to the observations of Mr. Brindley. He has given us the 

 positions of the quarries of the gray granite as distinguished from 

 the red granite, showing that although they come from the neigh- 

 bourhood of Syene they are quarried from distinct quarries. 



Mr. Bkindley. — No ; pardon me — I should say you find acres of 

 the dark-coloured granite immediately covering the red, but the 

 starling granite comes from elsewhere, but I would say that I do not 

 believe the Egyptians ever quarried it ; but that was done during 

 the Roman occupation. 



Professor Hull. — Then that bears out what I say. In regard 

 to the two columns at Venice, both come from Syene. I believe 

 porphyry may have been got either from the neighbourhood of 

 Syene itself, where Mr. Newbold was the first to discover it, or it 

 may have come from the Sinaitic Peninsula, where there is similar 

 stone to this — in fact all the stones of Egyptian works of art are 

 found repeatedly, I think, in the Sinaitic Peninsula and along the 

 Edomite side of the Arabah valley. 



Mr. Middleton, who, I am glad to see again after our former 

 meeting, has asked, When did the manufacture of fliut implements 

 cease in Egypt ? As a matter of fact I believe it has never ceased 

 to this day. I think Sir William Dawson himself describes in his 

 book on the geology of Bible lands the villages on the banks of 

 the Nile where flint implements are made to the present day,* as 

 was once done in England, but those to which he refers are, of 

 course, of a very ancient period. Reference has been made to the 

 relations between the strata of this period in Egypt and in the 

 Sinaitic Peninsula ? As far as I am able to ascertain at present 

 there occurs in the Sinaitic Peninsula a Carboniferous limestone. 

 That is interspersed between the red sandstone below, which I 



* In the discussion on a Paper by the late Eev. F. W. Holland, M.A. 

 (Transactions, Vol. xiv, p. 1), the Author mentions, in regard to the 

 manufacture of flint implements, that on more than one occasion during 



