Messrs. A. J. Evans and D. G. Hogarth in the
modest appeal for funds to prosecute their explorations in Crete addressed to Wednesday's Times give a remarkable summary of the splendid discoveries already made at Knossos and the cave of Psychro on Mount Dicta. These amount to the dis- covery of a palace "beside which those of Tiryns and Mycenm sink into insignificance," containing gigantic jars "that might have hidden the forty thieves," an alabaster throne, fresco paintings, a marble fountain, &c., together with a quantity of clay tablets—probably palace archives—in the hieroglyphic Cretan script, dating back some seven centuries earlier than the first known monuments of the historic Greek writing. This great palace with its "maze of corridors and tortuous passages" is, in the opinion of the writers, none other than the Labyrinth of later tradition, and the throne may well be that on which Minos once delivered the law. There remain the very successful explorations in the cave of Zeus on Mount Dicta, where quantities of votive offerings have been found, Five-sixths of the cost of the work at Knossos—where the House of Minos is still but half un- covered—have so far fallen on the explorers' shoulders. It would indeed be a national disgrace if for lack of public support-0,000 are needed to execute the contemplated programme—British archmological enterprise failed to main- tain the splendid lead won by the exertions of Messrs. Evans and Hogarth.
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