October ig, igi ij 



NATURE 



5i9 



Germany, or any other country might be proud. Dr. 

 Xanthoudidis has for several years past made im- 

 portant discoveries, and now Dr. Hatzidakis has 

 discovered and is excavating an important Minoan 

 palace at Tylissos, not far from Knossos, at the base 

 of Ida. Great brazen bowls, the largest vase of 

 obsidian (a single piece twelve inches high) yet dis- 

 covered, and a remarkably bold and fine bronze 

 statuette of a man in the Minoan saluting attitude 

 of adoration, are only a few of the fine trophies that 

 have come from Tylissos to the shelves of the really 

 magnificent museum of Candia. The work at 

 Tylissos continues under the direction of Dr. 

 Hatzidakis. 



The Museum of Candia may be described as the 

 Mecca of students of the Greek Bronze age, though 

 the Ashmolean at Oxford, thanks to the unremitting 

 care of Sir Arthur Evans, is a very good second to 



a fresco depicting a boar-hunt, in which figure two 

 women (or, more probably, in the writer's view, noble 

 youths) riding to the hunt in a chariot. A fine repre- 

 sentation of a woman in splendid robes has also been 

 found. Reproductions of this fresco, from the accom- 

 plished hand of M. Gillieron, junr., will soon be 

 given to the world. 



Elsewhere in Greece, though interesting results 

 have been obtained by the French at Delos, the most 

 remarkable discovery has been made this year at 

 Corfu, where the Greek Archaeological Society has 

 discovered an archaic temple, with sculptures re- 

 sembling the metopes of Selinus in Sicily. In view 

 of the fact that ancient Kerkyra was a colony of 

 Corinth, and Selinus of the neighbouring Megara, 

 this resemblance is interesting. At the time of the 

 discovery the German Emperor was in residence at 

 his Corfiote palace of the Achilleion, and, thanks to 

 his active interest in it, the excava- 

 tion is to be continued under the 

 distinguished direction of the leader 

 of German archaeology in the 

 Levant, Prof. Dorpfeld (see Nature, 

 vol. lxxxvii., p. 149). 



I bring this account to an end 

 with a mention of the explorations 

 of Messrs. Wace and Thompson for 

 the English Macedonian Explora- 

 tion Fund in the Elassona district 

 of Turkish Thessaly, which will no 

 doubt add much to our knowledge 

 of the remarkable Neolithic culture 

 of northern Greece, which has upset 

 so many preconceived notions of the 

 early history of Greek civilisation. 

 It may be noted, in this connection, 

 that Mr. F. W. Hasluck has just 

 discovered a Minoan "bee-hive" 

 tomb at Kirk-kilisse in the vilayet 

 of Adrianople. H. R. Hall. 



it, so far as Cretan antiquities are concerned, and 

 the first vase room at the British Museum now con- 

 tains a " Mycenaean " collection which, thanks chiefly 

 to the results of past excavations of Minoan tombs 

 in Cyprus, makes the British Museum by no means a 

 bad third, while its Cretan collection also has now 

 become quite important. The Museum of Athens 

 proudly exhibits its trophies from " golden " Mycenae 

 and elsewhere in Greece, but of Cretan and Cypriote 

 antiquities it has none. 



The British School at Athens has again turned its 

 attention to a Mycenaean site this year, having- re- 

 sumed its interrupted excavations at Phylakopi in 

 the island of Melos. Interesting discoveries, 

 especially of pottery, have been made. The German 

 work at Tiryns last year produced most important 

 results, especially remarkable being the remains of 



NO. 2190, VOL. 87] 



PROGRESS IN ELECTRIC 

 LIGHTING, HEATING AND 

 COOKING. 

 L7LECTRICAL engineers are 

 t-' claiming — and are claiming 

 with justice — that great advances 

 from the industrial and commercial 

 point of view have been made dur- 

 ing the last year or two in electric 

 lighting, heating and cooking; but 

 the average man of science, who 

 probably concerns himself more 

 with general principles than with 

 the detailed applications of physics, 

 in what these great advantages 

 He will remember that the employ- 

 ment of tungsten in place of carbon for the filaments 

 of incandescent lamps, and the consequent improve- 

 ment in efficiency from 4 to i| watts per candle-power, 

 dates back to five years ago, and will point out that 

 in the present form of this lamp a tungsten filament 

 is still used, heated to the same temperature, and 

 consequently having the same light efficiency. As to 

 electric heating, he may even be still more sceptical, 

 for, when at school or college, he may have learnt 

 that the energy of an electric current flowing con- 

 tinuously through a resistance is transformed into 

 heat, and that no invention can make the heat gene- 

 rated greater than is represented by the square _ of 

 the current multiplied by the resistance of the wire. 

 It will, therefore, not be out of place to pass in review 



may wonder 

 really consist 



