6 REPORT— 1897. 



Saxon, or Norman times. But the power to do this, though involving no 

 small degree of detailed knowledge and some acquaintance with scientific 

 methods, can hardly entitle its possessors to be enrolled among the votaries 

 of science. 



A familiarity with all the details of Greek and Roman mythology and 

 culture must be regarded as a literary rather than a scientific qualifica- 

 tion ; and yet when among the records of classical times we come upon 

 traces of manners and customs which have survived for generations, and 

 which seem to throw some rays of light upon the dim past, when history 

 and writing were unknown, we are, I think, approaching the boundaries 

 of scientific Archseology. 



Every reader of Virgil knows that the Greeks were not merely orators, 

 but that with a pair of compasses they could describe the movements of 

 the heavens and fix the rising of the stars ; but when by modern Astro- 

 nomy we can determine the heliacal rising of some well-known star, with 

 which the worship in some given ancient temple is known to have been 

 connected, and can fix its position on the horizon at some particular spot, 

 say, three thousand years ago, and then find that the axis of the temple is 

 directed exactly towards that spot, we have some trustworthy scientific 

 evidence that the temple in question must have been erected at a date 

 approximately 1100 years B.C. If on or close to the same site we find that 

 more than one temple was erected, each having a different orientation, 

 these variations, following as they may fairly be presumed to do the 

 changing position of the rising of the dominant star, will also afibrd a 

 guide as to the chronological order of the diSerent foundations. The 

 researches of Mr. Penrose seem to show that in certain Greek temples, of 

 which the date of foundation is known from history, the actual orientation 

 corresponds with that theoretically deduced from astronomical data, 



Sir J. Norman Lockyer has shown that what holds good for Greek 

 temples applies to many of far earlier date in Egypt, though up to the 

 present time hardly a sufficient number of accurate observations have been 

 made to justify us in foreseeing all the instructive results that may be 

 expected to ai-ise from Astronomy coming to the aid of Archaeology. 



The intimate connection of Archaeology with other sciences is in no 

 case so evident as with respect to Geology, for when considering subjects 

 such as those I shall presently discuss, it is almost impossible to say 

 where the one science ends and the other begins. 



By the application of geological methods many archaeological questions 

 relating even to subjects on the borders of the historical period have been 

 satisfactorily solved. A careful examination of the limits of the area over 

 which its smaller coins are found has led to the position of many an 

 ancient Greek city being accurately ascertained ; while in England it has 

 only been by treating the coins of the Ancient Britons, belonging to a 

 period before the Roman occupation, as if they were actual fossils, that 

 the territories under the dominion of the various kings and princes who 

 struck them have been approximately determined. In arranging the 



