The church of the Holy Sepulchre and the site of the Holy Places is so vast a subject, both historically and architecturally, that only a lifelong acquaintance with its records and an intimate knowledge of every detail of its structure could excuse another attempt to trace its development. I propose, therefore, only to deal with the church so far as a sketch of its history and development form a necessary preface to the study of the Norman priory, which housed the canons during the brief but extremely interesting period of the Latin kingdom. The monastic buildings have not hitherto been thoroughly explored, owing to the difficulties raised while they were under the Moslem rule; I therefore took the exceptional opportunities which I had during my five months' residence in Jerusalem, with the British army there, to examine, with my friend Mr. E. G. Newnum, every part of the site.

After the death of Sir Edmund Antrobus of Amesbury Abbey, certain properties, including Stonehenge, were in 1915 sold by his representatives. Fortunately for all students of archaeology, Stonehenge was purchased by Sir Cecil Chubb of Bemerton, who generously presented it, together with some thirty acres of adjoining land, to the nation. The acquisition of this additional land has made it possible to set back an unsightly fence and divert a cart-track some distance from the monument. It was at once recognized by H.M. Office of Works that the monument required immediate attention, and it was therefore decided, by the advice of the Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments and the Ancient Monuments Board for England, that a careful examination of it should be made, and work for its preservation taken in hand. It was decided that the stones which were in a dangerous state should receive attention first, and then that those which had fallen in recent times should be re-erected, care being taken that all appearances of restoration should be avoided. By the courtesy of the Office of Works, the Society of Antiquaries was given every facility for carrying out a scheme of archaeological research on the site during the progress of the work, and the writer was appointed the representative of the Society. Preparations were begun in September 1919, but were much retarded owing to difficulties of transport and the delay in erecting two huts and the assembling of the large equipment necessary. It was not until the end of the year that work was actually begun.

In the early summer of 1919 a memorable discovery was made on Traprain Law in the county of Haddington, a hill on the East Lothian estate of the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour. From the natural advantages for defence which the hill presents, as well as from the plentiful surface indications of occupation, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland had concluded that the site was well worth excavating, and had begun work on it in the summer of 1914. This was continued during the following summer till operations were suspended by the war. One of the results of these two seasons' exploration was the revelation that beneath the turf were four welldefined floor-levels referable to periods of occupation dating from the first to the fourth, or commencement of the fifth, century of our era. In May last year the latest of these floor-levels had been removed, and the second was just being loosened with the point of the pick when a remarkable hoard of Roman silver plate was discovered buried in a hole some two feet in diameter and two feet in depth. No evidence remained of any sack or box in which it might have been contained, but the pieces lay jumbled in a mass as if they had been thrown in disorder into the hole. Few of them resembled silver—to such an extent had the treasure been affected by its long burial in the soil—and a dull leaden hue with a tinge of purple best describes its colour. Its condition otherwise bore eloquent testimony to the treatment it had received at the hands of its owners previous to its concealment.

The Royal Irish Academy recently purchased from Mr. H. Naylor, a Dublin dealer, a portion of an Irish shrine together with two fragments supposed to have belonged to it. These had been obtained at the sale held at Killua, co. Westmeath, early in June 1920, having formed part of a large number of Irish antiquities collected by Sir Benjamin Chapman, fourth baronet.

The following document is of some interest as illustrating the history of the ‘Children of the Chapel Royal’, which is not yet worked out for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

John Plummer is mentioned as one of the clerks of the King's Chapel in 1441, receiving a grant of £10 on the 12th April in that year. The grant of forty marks a year for the maintenance of the eight singing-boys, here mentioned, is dated 4th November 1444, and from that date onwards it may be presumed that they ceased to draw their clothing from the great wardrobe. On 24th February 1445 Plummer was formally appointed their teacher and governor. On 30th May 1446 the grant of forty marks, charged on the ulnager of Bristol, was renewed. This grant was presumably rendered invalid by the Act of Resumption of 1449, but it does not appear certain that the following warrant for its revival took effect, since no Letters Patent in pursuance are to be found in the Calendar of Patent Rolls. A similar grant of forty marks a year was granted to Plummer's successor, Henry Abyndon, on 16th March 1456, to date from his appointment at Michaelmas 1455. This grant was renewed by Edward IV on 10th July 1465.

For the past sixty years the environs of the village of Spiennes, south-east of Mons in Hainault, Belgium, have continually provided archaeologists with evidence in great abundance. The banks of the Trouille valley have been inhabited almost continuously since man first appeared on the earth, that is since the beginning of quaternary times. The relics of these successive occupations by man are distributed according to their date on three of the four terraces, at the respective elevations of 266, 233, 100, and 7 feet above the river level. On the 233 ft. terrace is found an industry of considerable interest, still almost entirely of eolithic character and typical of the first transition from the primitive industry to the palaeolithic. On the 100 ft. terrace a seam of flints at the base of the early alluvium contains an enormous development of the first palaeolithic industry which was named pre-Chelles by the late Professor Commont. This is the industry corresponding to the Piltdown skull in England, and to the second (133 ft.) and third (83 ft.) terraces of the Somme valley at St. Acheul. It also occurs on the high ground of North Kent (Swanscombe, Galley Hill, etc., on the 100 ft. terrace).

In a paper read before the St. Paul's Ecclesiological Society as far back as 12th November 1885, the late Sir William Hope laid down the main principles to be adopted in determining the dates of early chalices and patens of English manufacture. So far as I am aware nothing that has been written since has served to modify these principles in any marked degree. He classified the pre-Reformation chalices in eight sections. Between the first four and the last four of these there was a marked distinction, due to the spread in the fourteenth century of the custom of laying down the chalice on the paten to drain after the ablutions. The effect of this custom was the abandonment of the round-footed chalice, which would be unstable in such a position, and the making of chalices with hexagonal bases. For as practical a reason the hemispherical design of the bowl of the chalice was abandoned in favour of a conical shape which would drain the more easily in such a position.