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xxxvi several remains of antiquity which he has brought to light with the subjects mentioned in legends which have been handed down to us through the uncertain traditions of the poets.

The unhappy complications in Eastern Europe of a few years ago have at least brought forth some good results to antiquarian research. Thessaly having been ceded to Greece, learned men at Athens are already taking steps for the preservation of any objects of interest whieh may be brought to light on that classic soil. In Cyprus, English, Greek, and Turk are united in the careful search for Cypriotic, Phœnician, and Greek remains, which no doubt still abound in that island, no longer, I am glad to say, to sell to the highest bidder in Western Europe or America, but to form a local museum at Nicosia.

The Commission which is now labouring at Rome has already been rewarded, besides minor triumphs, by the discovery of the walls of Antemnæ, a city which is mentioned by Virgil, when he tells how—

and which is stated by Livy to have been the birth-place of Hersilia, the wife of Romulus, and to have been one of the cities that joined in the attack on Rome in revenge for the rape of the Sabines. How far we can regard the incidents related by Livy as literally true, or whether we must treat them as a vast pile of legend built on a slender foundation of history, it would be out of place for me here to consider; but at least we may take it as a fact that Antemnæ was a town which flourished ere Rome was built, and was destroyed long before the time of Pliny, and that even a very few years since it was believed that no traces of it could be found.

Turning to geographical research, much valuable information has been obtained concerning the hitherto little known countries of Central Asia, by the explorations of O'Donovan in the Merv Oasis, by Floyer in Beloochistan, Baber in Western China, and other travellers both English and Russian.

The results of the interesting geographical and ethnological investigations made by my friend M. Miklouho Maclay during his scientific travels in South-Eastern Asia and Oceanica, have been given to the world by means of lectures before the Russian Geographical Society, and are soon to appear in a complete form, the work being published at the expense of the Emperor. Recent events, which have turned our attention to New Guinea, make the information he has collected during several prolonged visits to that island of special