round.[47] Dalton, speaking of a bronze head of a
Negro girl now in the British Museum, declares it to be "the most
artistic and perfect of all the castings in the round." Ling Roth,
speaking of the same head, declares it to be the "finest piece of cast
bronze art obtained from Benin."

A find by Frobenius during his excavations at Ilife seems to support
these conclusions. For of all the objects found by him at that site,
his most important discovery he declares to be a bronze head, which he
thinks is that of an ancient African god. The head wears a diadem with
a staff. From the very tip of the diadem staff to the chin the object
measures thirty-one and a quarter inches. "It is cast in what we call
_cere perdue_, or hollow cast, and is indeed finely chased, suggesting
the finest Roman examples. The setting of the lips, the shape of the
ears, the contour of the face, all prove, if separately examined, the
perfection of a work of true art, which the whole of it obviously
is."[48]

Some attention may now be given to the method by which these objects
were made and to the question of their age and origin. In a report
before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in
February, 1898,[49] Mr. C. H. Read and Mr. O. M. Dalton described
these objects as having been cast in moulds. They testified as to the
difficulties attendant upon such methods in sculpture, announcing that
they had "been overcome with the certainty and skill which only long
practice of a familiar art could produce. This alone goes to prove
that at whatever period the objects were made they were produced by a
people long acquainted with the art of casting metals."[50]

Their report continues: "The method by which the objects were produced
can only be that known as _cere perdue_ process. By no other is it
conceivable that so much extravagant relief and elaborately undercut
detail could be represented with success. The process may be described
in a very few words. The model is first made in wax, and every part of
its surface is then covered with fine clay; the whole work is then
hidden in a mass of clay. An outlet is then made for the wax to
escape, and the mass is then heated until the wax has melted out,
leaving, of course, a mould of exactly the design of the wax in the
original state. The metal is then poured in and fills every hollow
space left by the wax." Read and Dalton, as well as Ling Roth, testify
that when casting objects in the r