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Excerpt from The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, 1857, Vol. 3 From the next chapter of my treatise, the chapter in which I shewed the futility of the objections brought against the Mont Cenis, Mr Law, with unusual forbearance, selects but a single subject for attack. He says, (p. There is one matter in the Oxford Dissertation which Mr Ellis resists; namely, the contrast there made between the fertility of the Isere valley, and the sterility of the Arc valley. He replies, p. 156, that it is merely a. Question of statistics; and proceeds to compare the population, per square kilometre, of the provinces in which the one (i. E. The Isére valley) lies, with the population, per square kilometre, of the provinces in which the other (i. E. The Arc valley) lies. This is rather dexterously turned. I compared the density of population in the provinces of Maurienne and Susa with that in the provinces of Tarentaise and Aosta; not the density of population in the provinces in which the Isere valley lies, (i spoke but of one), with that in the provinces in which the Arc valley lies, (there is but one). Mr Law will hardly persuade men that the province of Susa is watered by the Arc, or that of Aosta by the Isere. But his object was, to get rid on one side of the fertile and populous Combe of Susa, and to introduce on the Other the equally fortunate Combe of Savoy, the valley which extends from Montmelian to l'hopital, but' forms no part of the Tarentaise, a very different country in all respects. Nor has Mr Law, in limiting the question to one of comparative fertility, stated the case at all correctly. The Oxford author rightly supposes population and fertility to go together, instead of being distinct questions, as Mr Law would make them out to be. The former writer says, in the passage which I quoted, that the country must have been well culti vated, and consequently full of inhabitants; and also, in another part of his work, that the Tarentaise is a very populous c