Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/355

Rh —Before asking gentlemen to make any remarks upon this Report, I cannot but express my own gratification—and I am sure that I am expressing that of all those present—that a new page has at last been turned over at Jerusalem, so that we may hope that much which has been hidden from us for so long may now soon be brought to light. Up to the present we have, as you have heard, found a portion of the old wall of Jerusalem which had hitherto been hidden, and have followed for a considerable distance the scarp and counterscarp situated south of the present city wall, in the course of which excavations coins and pottery, Mosaic pavements, and chambers have been discovered, and I hope we are on the way to make further important discoveries. I will now ask if anyone has any remarks to make upon the Report which has just been read.

—I have very great pleasure in rising to move that the Report which we have just heard, together with the statement of accounts, be adopted. I am sure we have all listened with great interest to the statement which has been made by our esteemed Assistant Secretary, recording the valuable labours of the Executive Committee, to whom the members of the Society owe a deep debt of gratitude. I am sure we all join in the congratulations of our Chairman that the Firman has at length been granted, by which the labours of the Society can be turned more especially in the direction of excavation about the city of Jerusalem—the centre around which the chief interest of the Society lies. I was much interested in that portion of the Report which refers to the increase of rainfall at Jerusalem during the last 16 years, which you, Mr. Chairman, have worked out so carefully. It just struck me whether this might not possibly be a permanent increase of rain. We know that in Egypt—I suppose in consequence of the opening of the Canal and for other reasons—there has been an increase of rainfall. I believe I am speaking correctly, although I do not know it from personal knowledge, but from general information, when I say that there has been a considerable increase of rain in Lower Egypt. Heavy showers are occasionally encountered there. Well, that change in the atmospheric condition may extend to the district about Jerusalem, and possibly with some other physical changes which are gradually taking place, but which we cannot observe, there may be a gradual increase in the precipitation of moisture in that part of the East, which would be very gratifying if it did take place, and which would, of course, bring with it an increase in the productiveness of the country I should be glad to know how often there has been a fall of snow in the winter at Jerusalem during those 16 years, because in the years that I happened to be there, as Mr. Armstrong knows pretty well, we had a fall of snow—I think in January, 1884—of about 2 feet in thickness all over the country round Jerusalem, and we had the curious phenomena of palm trees rising out of a field of snow.

—I shall be very glad to second the reception and adoption of the Report. What strikes me about the General Committee is, that I think it would add very much to the interest taken in