210 
ing exhausted at an early date, a commission was 
appointed, in 1903, to report on the whole ques- 
tion of future policy, and after due inquiry they 
recommended the impounding of the Catskill 
watershed, including the Esopus, Rondout, 
Schoharie, and Catskill creeks. Following this 
report, in 1905, the Board of Water Supply was 
organised, and the necessary sanction having been 
obtained, the field was open for operations to be 
commenced. 
The basins from which the new supply is taken 
lie due north of New York, within a range of 
about one hundred miles from the centre of the 
city. It is calculated that the available yield of 
the total area is about 660 million gallons daily, 
but from this, for the present, at any rate, must 
be deducted the Schoharie watershed (136 million 
gallons), for which powers of incorporation have 
not been granted. 
At this point we must leave the reader who 
wishes to pursue his researches further to do so 
in the volume itself. It will be found replete 
with data and particulars relating to the various 
contracts entered into for the execution of the 
project which has just recently been completed, 
and the author must be complimented on the result 
of his painstaking efforts to produce an account 
worthy of the achievement, which, with its 120 
miles of dams, aqueducts, and tunnels, he proudly 
describes as “hardly second to the Panama 
Canal.” B:G: 
ROMANCE IN ARCHAOLOGY. 
Egyptian Art. Studies by Sir Gaston Maspero. 
Translated by Elizabeth Lee. Pp. 223+ plates. 
(London and Leipzig: T. Fisher Unwin, 1913.) 
Price 215s. net. 
a , two o’clock in the afternoon of February 
12, 1906, while Naville was finishing his 
lunch, a workman came running up to tell him 
that the top of a vault was beginning to emerge 
from the earth.” This is the opening sentence of 
the eleventh section or chapter in Sir Gaston 
Maspero’s latest work, and it may serve as an 
indication of the book’s quality. We here have 
no carefully reasoned presentation of the various 
aspects and problems presented by Egyptian Art. 
Such a work, by the same author, we already 
possess in “Art in Egypt,” which has appeared 
within the year in the Ars una: species mille 
Series. “Egyptian Art” falls into quite a dif- 
ferent category, and will prove an admirable foil 
or supplement to the more formal treatise. 
It consists, in fact, as a sub-title warns us, of 
a collection of “Studies,” written during a period 
NO; 2332.7 VOL. 93) 
NATURE 
[APRIL 30, I914 
of more than thirty years, which have been 
rescued from the pages of old periodicals, and 
are here presented together in an_ attractive 
English dress. Each is a separate essay, complete 
in itself; in some a single piece of Egyptian sculp- 
ture is described; others deal with an allied group 
of pieces, or of goldsmiths’ work, But one char- 
acteristic is common to them all: the subject is 
used as a peg on which the author displays some 
idea or principle, generally of wider application 
than the particular example he selects. So any 
reader who already possesses “Art in Egypt” 
will here find Sir Gaston’s views applied in a 
number of specific instances. The relation of the 
two books is very much that of a treatise on 
algebra to a series of worked-out problems. 
The papers are here translated direct from the 
journals in which they made their first appear- 
ance, and have been subjected to no subsequent 
re-writing. Consequently, describing, as several 
of them do, masterpieces of Egyptian art within 
a day or two of their discovery, they still reflect 
the author’s first enthusiasm, unblunted by later 
familiarity. The reader is transported from the 
atmosphere of a museum to the clear air of the 
Egyptian desert. He watches the diggers at their 
work, and shares something of their excitement. 
If he continues the chapter from which we quoted 
the opening words, he will soon see the head of 
the wonderful Hathor Cow standing out from the 
black recesses of the rock-hewn vault at Deir-el- 
Bahari as the débris of centuries is removed. Or 
turning to chapter xvil. he may, if he will, stand 
with Sir Gaston’s ghafirs as they watch the work- 
men who are making a railway embankment on 
the site of ancient Bubastis. It has been reported 
that jewelry has been found; the police have 
searched the workmen’s houses, and have re- 
covered some of the pieces, but the fellahs have 
kept their secret. Suddenly a workman with his 
pick lays bare several fragments of silver. He 
tries to conceal them, but the ghafirs are too 
quick for him; and soon the Treasure of Zagazig, 
exquisite jewelry and vases of the XIXth Dynasty, 
is uncovered in the sunlight, a heap of gold 
between two layers of silver. 
We have purposely laid stress on the vivid 
character of Sir Gaston’s pages, for they serve to 
restore the element of romance which of late 
years archeology has run some risk of losing, at 
least for the general reader. But in doing so, we 
have left no space to touch on the general prin- 
ciples which the essays are intended to drive 
home, such as the utilitarian character of Egyp- 
tian art and the influence of a fixed purpose on its 
forms and conventions. Nor can we follow the 
