The three of the excavators of the Orthia Sanctuary most concerned confess to a feeling of discouragement on finding that in the case of one reader at least all their endeavours to tell a plain tale plainly have failed, and that their power of expression has not been equal to the task laid upon it. The reader in question is the writer of the very careful and painstaking review of ‘Artemis Orthia’ which has appeared in the J.H.S. for this year over the initials V. W.-G. It is plain that to the reviewer the grounds on which the latter periods of Laconian pottery, the periods of its decay, upon which so much depends, have been classified are neither clear nor convincing. And since, in fact, the evidence on which that classification was made was both clear and convincing, the failure must lie in the exposition. In the excavators' hands the spade has been mightier than the pen. Or does the fault lie in an historical training which has not been adequate to the appreciation of the minutiae of archaeological evidence? ‘The historian,’ we are told, ‘may differ from the excavator in his estimate of what is proved.’