December 12, 1901] 



NA TURE 



131 



the Oasis in the calm winter and spring months. Even 

 at the present day the Oasis is enlarging its boundary, 

 and the surface of the plateau is being ground away by 

 sand, and the underlying clays on the faces of the 

 scarps are being steadily excavated. The water in 

 the Oasis is derived from the rainfall of the high- 

 lands in the interior of .Africa, which, commg by way 

 of the permeable underground strata, appears where 

 these strata rise to the surface or are pierced by wells, 

 though strangely enough the wells are chiefly on the 

 down-throw side of the fault, i.e. to the eastward of it. 



The history of the Oasis of Kharga in its relation to 

 Egyptian history is full of interest in every way. That 

 it was well known to the Egyptians under the Early 

 Empire is tolerably certain, for from the inscription of 

 the officer Una who made expeditions into the deserts of 

 Libya and the .Sudan we know that the tribes of the 

 districts in the neighbourhood of it were in the habit of 

 waging war against each other. Under the eighteenth 

 dynasty the Oasis of the North and the Oasis of the South 

 were subject to the great kings Thothmes III. and .-Xmen- 

 hetep III., and there is no doubt that a considerable 

 trade between them and Egypt was in existence in still 

 earlier times. Every now and then the tribes revolted 

 against the rule of Egypt, but their triumph was short- 

 lived, for Egyptian soldiers appeared and the rebellion 

 was stamped out in a peculiarly firm manner, and the 

 trees were cut down and the gardens destroyed. In the 

 twenty-second dynasty the Oases were still reckoned as 

 a part of Egypt, and under the Persians Kharga was 

 chosen by Darius Las the site of the fine temple which he 

 built there ; this temple was finished by Uarius II., and 

 must have been, judging by its present remains, a striking 

 and a remarkable oljject. It is curious to note that the 

 Egyptians at one time believed that the souls of the dead 

 made their way to the Oases, and it is obvious that the 

 green fields and gardens full of vines and palm trees 

 easily connected themselves in their minds with the 

 Elysian Fields, wherein every Egyptian hoped eventually 

 to live. Before the end of the twenty-sixth dynasty Kharga 

 was used as a place of banishment for criminals and 

 evil doers, and the Romans found it necessary to main- 

 tain a garrison at Hibis, the chief city of the Oasis, to 

 keep order. Chrisfianity was introduced into the Oasis 

 by one of the Apostles, who is said to have died and been 

 buried there, and when Nestorius was banished there 

 .\.u. 435 he found flourishing Christian communities at 

 several places in the Oasis who would, no doubt, accord 

 him a far from hearty welcome. 



Mr. Ball has consulted the works of travellers such as 

 Cailliaud and Hoskins, Rohlfs and Brugsch, and although 

 he has little new to say about the temples and other 

 buildings which they described, his notes on the temples 

 of Hibis, Nadura, Kasr al-Guehda, Kasr Zaiyan, Kasr 

 Dush, or Kysis, are most useful, especially as they 

 are accompanied by clear plans. His ^remarks on the 

 Christian antiquities are somewhat meagre, but then he is 

 an engineer and not an archaeologist. In the next edition 

 of his work the paragraph on p. 78 in which he states 

 that the Christian tombs are those of the followers of 

 Nestorius should be modified, for we know on the autho- 

 rity of Christian tradition and writings that there were 

 several congregations of Christians in the Oasis of 

 Kharga one or two centuries before the time of Nes- 

 torius, and it is evident that they must have left graves 

 behind them. The tombs may then as well belong to 

 the third and fourth as to the fifth and sixth centuries ; 

 and seeing that Nestorius was a violent opponent of the 

 Monophysites in Egypt, it is more than doubtful if he had 

 any followers at all among the Jacobite Christians of 

 Kharga. But these considerations in no way affect the 

 value of Mr. Ball's engineering work, though they do 

 show that an engineer is not also necessarily an archteo- 

 logist. ._^ 



NO. 1676, VOL. 65] 



SIR WILLIAM MacCORMAC, BART., K.C.B., 

 K.C.V.O. 



SIR WILLIAM M.^cCORMAC, whose death occurred 

 suddenly and unexpectedly on the morning of 

 December 4 at Bath, where he had gone for treatment 

 of an illness which his intimate friends, although feeling 

 considerable anxiety on his behalf, little thought would 

 end so tragically, was one of the most prominent figures 

 in the medical profession in London. He was the son 

 of a well-known Belfast physician, Dr. Henry MacCormac, 

 the author of such philosophical works as " The Philo- 

 sophy of Human Nature," published in 1837, and 

 "Aspirations from the Inner Life," in i860, as well 

 as of works on the nature, treatment and preven- 

 tion of consumption, which attracted much attention 

 at the time and have come again into notice re- 

 cently as having anticipated the modern doctrine of 

 the open-air treatment of tubercular disease. Sir 

 William MacCormac was born in Belfast on January 

 17, 1836 ; he was educated in his native city and gradu- 

 ated as M.A. of the Queen's University of Ireland in 

 1858. He subsequently studied medicine in Dublin and 

 Paris and became a Fellow of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons, Ireland, in 1864, entering at the saine time 

 into the active work of his profession as surgeon to the 

 Royal Belfast Hospital, a post which he held until 1870. 



On the outbreak of the Franco-German war he 

 returned to Paris and offered his services to the French 

 Red Cross Society, " La SocitUe dc Secours aux hlessds 

 militaires." His offer was accepted and he was ordered 

 to Metz, where he was taken prisoner, released and sent 

 back to Paris. It was then that, along with Mr. Furley, 

 now Sir John Furley, and Dr. Philip Frank, he came in 

 contact with Dr. Marion Sims and other Americans (who 

 had come over with a large quantity of material, but with 

 little or no funds), and established the Anglo-American 

 Ambulance with the financial assistance of the National 

 Aid Society, which had been formed in London at the 

 beginning of the war. The Ambulance proceeded at 

 once to Sedan under the charge of Dr. Marion Sims, 

 with MacCormac as second in command, and arrived 

 there in time to take an active and prominent part in 

 the decisive battle of the campaign. At Sedan Mac- 

 Cormac was in his element, and it was there that he laid 

 the foundation of his future greatness. His " Notes and 

 Recollections of an Ambulance Surgeon," published in 

 1871, vividly described his experiences of the battle and 

 the absorbing, incessant work of a surgeon in the midst 

 of carnage. The book has been translated into German, 

 French, Dutch, Italian, Russian and Japanese, and has 

 made his name a household word amongst the military 

 surgeons of Europe. When the pressure of the work in 

 Sedan was over MacCormac returned to England, and 

 with the assistance of the influential committee of the 

 National Aid Society was appointed to the staff of St. 

 Thomas's Hospital, which had just been opened. He 

 took the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, 

 England, at the same time, and remained associated with 

 St. Thomas's in the varying capacities of assistant 

 surgeon, surgeon and lecturer on surgery in the medical 

 school, and consulting surgeon and Emeritus lecturer on 

 clinical surgery. He also held many other consulting 

 appointments in London and was examiner in connection 

 with the naval and military medical services. 



His reputation as an authority on gunshot wounds was 

 not allowed to lapse for want of opportunity. In 1876 he 

 accompanied the late Lord Wantage, then Colonel Loyd- 

 Lindsay, to Alexinatz during the war between Servia and 

 Turkey. His period of stay at the seat of war was, 

 however, brief, as he and his companion were obliged to 

 take flight with the retreating army. In 1899 he was 

 appointed a consulting surgeon to the field force in 

 South Africa, and saw much of the results of the earlier 

 and fiercer struggles of the war. 



