220 
NATURE 
[xuly 8, 1886 
the ground: the rest of the wall was of sun-dried brick ; 
the whole was then covered inside and out with three 
coats of stucco made of lime mixed with sand, gravel, and 
broken pottery, a mixture which set nearly as hard as 
stone, and must have been a most perfect protection even 
m the stormiest weather. Finally, where the stucco was 
to be painted a thin coat of pure lime was applied asa 
ground for the colours, which consisted of red, yellow, 
and brown ochres, with charcoal-black and lime-white ; 
and lastly, blue and green sa/t/ or pigments, made of 
powdered glass. All these colours were of the most 
durable sort, and could be applied, as appears to have 
been done at Tiryns, on freshly-laid stucco—true fresco. 
The painted decorations are of the very highest interest, 
and very characteristic examples of primitive art, which 
show strong traces of Egyptian or Phcenician influence. 
Some of these wall-paintings are evidently copied from 
textile patterns, and, though rudely executed, have much 
true decorative value. Woven stuffs such as were made 
in Egypt are imitated by the painter, and even the fringes 
are carefully copied. Other pictures, of which only frag- 
ments remain, had large figures of animals or men with 
wide-spreading wings, the feathers of which are painted 
in alternating colours in a very brilliant and skilful way. 
These show strong signs of Phoenician influence. The 
most remarkable and best preserved of all is a picture of 
a bull galloping at full speed, on whose back a man is 
riding in an acrobatic sort of way, holding on by one of 
the bull’s horns. The whole is painted with much vigour, 
and with a rapid sweeping touch of the brush, which 
shows considerable practice and skill on the part of the 
painter. 
Some parts of the palace were evidently decorated in a 
much more magnificent and costly way—that is, the walls 
were lined with wooden boarding, and on this were nailed 
plates of gilt bronze beaten into vepoussé reliefs—very 
similar probably in style to the ninth century gates of 
Shalmaneser II., now in the British Museum, and other 
bronze reliefs found at Olympia. Many small fragments 
of these gilt metal linings were found in the burnt debris 
of the palace; and there is little doubt that the wooden 
columns in the hall and its portico must once have been 
cased with similar metal sheathing: very like the bronze- 
cased wooden column which was found some years ago 
among the ruins of Khorsabad. 
Nothing could exceed the splendour of this mode of 
wall-decoration—the whole surface enriched with its 
gleaming reliefs would appear one mass of shining gold, 
and we know now that the gold and silver walls of the 
Homeric palace of Alcinous were not merely the offspring 
of a poet’s fancy. Fragments were discovered by Dr. 
Dorpfeld of another extremely sumptuous method of 
architectural decoration—a frieze about 20 inches deep 
sculptured in alabaster with a rich and minutely worked 
pattern of rosettes and geometrically treated flowers, 
thickly studded with carefully cut bits of jewel-like trans- 
parent blue paste or glass. ‘The effect of these deep-blue 
jewels flashing light from the contrasting creamy white of 
the alabaster must have given a most striking effect to 
the room which was adorned in so costly a way, especially 
if the wall below the frieze were one of those which were 
coated with the gold reliefs. 
Nor was the colour confined to the walls: even the 
floors were decorated with simple patterns in brilliant 
blue and red, applied after the design had been indicated 
by lines incised on the surface. These floors were made 
of strong lime and gravel concrete carefully laid in three 
or four layers, each of finer material than the one below 
—a method exactly similar to that described by Vitruvius 
and used so skilfully by the Roman builders. 
A very interesting point about the Tirynthian palace 
is its very careful method of drainage, partly with neatly 
fitted clay drain-pipes, and partly with large culverts built 
of rough stone and puddled inside with clay: this latter 
form was used for the main drains, while the branches 
which led to it were of pipes square in section, each 
length of clay pipe being narrowed at one end so as to 
fit closely into the next. All the open courts were well 
paved with concrete, which was laid so as to fall to a sur- 
face-gully, down which the rain-water passed, first through 
a clay pipe, then into the main stone drain, and so into 
a series of cisterns, where it was stored for use during a 
siege. 
Much manual skill and great variety of tools were used 
by the masons who worked the stones for this building. 
Pointed hammers were used for the rough work, and 
chisels for the ashlar stone: the large thresholds of the 
various doorways were cut with a saw, with which emery 
must have been used, as its marks show that each stroke 
of the saw cut a considerable depth into the stone. Hol- 
low drills set with some kind of hard jewel were also used 
here: in many of the drill-holes used to fix the pegs or 
dowels of the wood-work above, the stone stump of the 
core still exists, showing that a tubular, and not a solid, 
drill was used. Some of the large quoins or angle blocks 
were quarried thus—four drill-holes were sunk at-the four 
corners of the future block, and then saw-cuts were made 
from hole to hole. 
This use of tubular jewelled drills, which has recently 
been introduced with such effect into modern methods of 
engineering, dates from a very early period. As Mr. 
Flinders Petrie has pointed out, jewelled drills, both solid 
and tubular, were used in Egypt as early as 4000 years 
before Christ, especially in the working of the very re- 
fractory granites, basalts, and porphyries, which no 
unaided metal tools could possibly have cut. That jewels 
lle : ‘ 
| fixed in the rim of the metal tube were used, and not 
merely loose corundum or emery-powder, is shown by the 
fact that the scratch from a single projecting jewel can 
often be traced continuously round the spiral markings 
on the insides of the drill-holes. 
It is not, however, only the mere technical details of 
the workmanship of this Tirynthian palace that bear 
strong witness to its early date, but also the methods of 
construction—the walls of sun-baked bricks set on a foot- 
ing of stuccoed rubble, the use of wood instead of stone 
for the columns, and the magnificence of the walls lined 
with plates of bronze, vefoussé and gilt. 
Finally, nothing can be clearer than the evidence sup- 
plied by the semi-Oriental style of the wall-paintings, and 
the distinctly archaic character of the delicately sculp- 
tured alabaster frieze, studded with gem-like pieces of 
blue xvavos—exactly as was once the case with the 
central row of spirals in the well-known architrave from 
the doorway of the “ Treasury of Atreus” in the British 
Museum, the remote antiquity of which is disputed by 
no one. In fact the methods of execution, the system of 
its construction, and the style of its decoration all com- 
bine to show that we owe to Dr. Schliemann and Dr. 
Dorpfeld the discovery of an almost new phase of pre- 
historic Greek art. J. H. M. 
ON VARIATIONS OF THE CLIMATE IN THE 
COURSE OF TIME? 
F we examine the meteorological charts of Norway we 
observe at once what a great influence the sea and 
the mountains exercise over the climate in various parts. 
Nearly all the climatological lines run more or less with 
the shape of the coast, so that we encounter far greater 
variation when proceeding from the centre coastwards 
t The following is a short abstract from various papers, viz. : ‘‘ Essay on 
the Immigration of the Norwegian Flora during Alternating Rainy and Dry 
Periods "’ (Christiania, 1876). _‘‘ Die Theorie der wechselnden kontinentalen 
und insularen Klimate,”’ in Engler’s Botanische ¥ahrbiicher, ii. (Leipzig, 
1881). “* Ueber Wechsellagerung und deren mutmassliche Bedeutung fiir die 
Zeitrechnung der Geologie und fiir die Lehre yon der Veranderung der 
Arten,”’ in Biologisches Centralblatt, iii. (Erlangen, 1883). ‘‘ Ueber die 
wahrscheinliche Ursache der periodischen Ver-inderungen in der Stirke der 
Meeresstré6mungen”’ /.c. iv. (Erlangen, 1884). 
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