120 



THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MAGAZINE. 



with other tomb furniture, in the ceme- 

 teries of Lahun and Sedment, betweeii 

 sixty and seventy miles south of Cairo. 

 Other boudoir adjuncts, found in 

 great variety, are caskets and boxes used 

 for jewellery and eogmetics. Then- 

 construction often shows great ingenuity 

 and intricate workmanship. Hinged re- 

 ceptacles are unknown, but curious are 

 the substitutes employed to make open- 

 ing and shutting possible. 



Four alabaster cosmetic pots used to hold 



eyepaint or "kohl." Two of these contain 



malachite and other pigments, and some are 



about 700b years old. 



Plioto. — A. Mussrave. 



The wooden casket, or trinket box 

 figured, closes by the sliding of the two 

 parts together, much after the principle 

 of a modern school pencil case. The 

 lid portion forms nearly half of the 

 casket and the whole, when closed, is 

 almost circular in section except for the 

 margin of added wood to strengthen the 

 region of the slide grooves. Each part 

 contains five cells or recesses, these open- 

 ings being in apposition when the casket 

 is closed. The reason for this added 



"Vanity box" from ancient Egypt, over 3000 



years old, used for holding trinkets and 



ornaments. 



Plioto. — A. Musgrave. 



space in the lid is not apparent, for, if 

 the objects in either half project, the lid 

 would not slide. It may be, that the 

 articles placed in the ixpper half, wer«* 

 such as would stay in place undisturbed. 



The body of the receptacle and its 

 divisions have been cut from the solid. 

 The ends of the lower half, likewise the 

 lateral margin, have been attached to 

 the body with wooden dowels. A small 

 knob forms the handle for sliding the 

 two component parts together. 



This casket dates back to the period 

 of the Eighteenth Dynasty, about 1600 

 B.C., and is from Sedment. 



We are indebted to the public spirit 

 shown both by Mr. Ernest Wunderlich 

 (Trustee), and his brother, Mr. Alfred 

 Wunderlich, for these interesting objects 

 lat.ely added to our collections. The 

 joint gift from which these articles were 

 chosen, contained over one hundred 

 specimens, and was unearthed by the 

 British School of Archaeology in Egypt 

 during the season 1920-1921. 



Migratory Locusts. 



By G. H. Hardy. 



The short-horned grasshoppers which 

 are so destructive to vegetation in vari- 

 ous parts of the world are known as 

 migratory or plague locusts. In Aus- 

 tralia we are, to our sorrow, familiar 

 with these swarms, which are at times 

 so extensive that trains are held up, the 

 numerous crushed bodies of the insects 

 rendering the rails greasy. Just re- 



cently the grasshopper i^est has been 

 particularly bad in the Singleton dis- 

 trict in this State, and at Gawler in 

 South Australia. 



The migratory locusts breed prolifi- 

 cally only within restricted areas and it 

 is from these areas that they swarm, 

 covering vast tracts of land, destroying 

 vegetation and laying eggs anywhere in 



