1954–1968: J. S. Last

14 Jan 1955Dear Ellen: Thankyou for your letter of Jan 4. I'm sorry to hear of your flu and I hope you have both recovered. First, as to shop: I am sending you by airmail all that I have ready of my Water Supply stuff, i.e., the MSS and photos but not the drawings or maps. These are not all ready yet and as they will need a roll they had better go together. They will be all at the end of the report and are not necessary for the preliminary examination. Photos nos. 9 & 26: I had new prints made and have mislaid both the prints and the negative of 9 and a new print of 26 shortly. The captions for the photos and a note for the Editor are at the end of the MSS. I have pencilled a faint scale in the margins of the photos for Plates XI-XIII as I'm not sure how you will want to show this. My scale applies to the centre of each pipe, not the front, and doesn't correspond exactly with the miniature scale shown in some of the prints. Please let me know what is wanted about Air-photos, if anything. I think it would be nice for one of the Kourion reports to have one or more air-photos.

MISCELLANEOUS: For economy in production (and neatness) I think my appendices could run on continuously. I have used "Englisk" "miles" sometimes though all the rest is metric as I don't think speakers visualise kilometers well. Sometimes, as in Table C, I have not put a zero before the decimal point. I don't know what is your practice. Some of my text should be separated by a space I think my map-reference letters in the text (e.g., near foot of p. 6) look rather from the numbers following but I may have missed one or two. elaborate references in the text should be done if the reader (if any) wants to clumsy but I don't know what can be done if the reader (if any) wants to know what item I'm referring to. The Cross-reference Table (A) may not be very handy. But I may have overdone the references in text, tables &c.

The MSS I am sending you (3rd Edition!) is a reduction to about half the bulk of the original but I find I have swollen it up quite a bit with notes some of which may be less important than the excluded material. With so I hope the Editors will have no hesitation in slashing to taste. I sent to R. Stilwell with my the MSS I shall enclose a copy of a note I sent to R. Stilwell with my "House of the Achilles Mosaic" MSS. Whatever acknowledgements the Editors may consider appropriate might include one that my Map I "is based largely on official sources"; and another that the pipe photos (Plates XI-XIII) are by G.R. Edwards. (The rest, and the drawings, maps, &c are by me). I might add that with the exception of one lamp (which helps in dating owing to the finds its sealed provenance) and the objects dealt with in the tables, the finds have no bearing on water supply matters. So I see no object in preparing for publication an elaborate catalogue of irrelevant odds and ends (but I propose to keep an adequate catalogue here).

I find that, after all, I need not have used this letter paper so economically but I wanted to be sure of getting it all on - I couldn't send two letters! By the way, if you have no particular interest in philately I should like to have the stamps on my airmailed MSS as there quite an expensive item and I do collect. (Unless of course, they are considered as Museum property)

Thanks for the tip about drawing paper driers - I don't know them but I'm sure that I shall need some as even if it doesn't rain I'm always liable to burst into a flood of tears. Perhaps Roger could bring some and some "book-saver" for me. (Henry Fischer showed me some and I like it)