It is my pleasant duty to begin by returning to you my most sincere thanks for the honour you have once more done me. In electing me your President for the fifth time, and an officer of the Society for the twenty-sixth time, you have completed for me my record, for this is the last time that I shall ever ask for your votes in this room. If I am in my place next year I shall hope then to express to you how deeply I feel this final proof of your confidence; but the very fact that I am now entering on my last year of office turns my thoughts towards the end of my long service, and to the debt I owe to you all for your constant support and encouragement.

In 1912, when I undertook a survey of the distribution of the Anglo-Saxon saucer-brooches, I endeavoured to bring that survey into line with the historical records of the period, and thus was compelled to use the campaign of A.D. 571 as the pivot round which the results of my examination of the material must be made to revolve. Certain deductions in regard to distribution of types and decorative motives ensued, but the main result attained was the demonstration of a wider diffusion of the saucer-brooch and the ‘applied’ or ‘composite’ form than had been previously appreciated, and, further, the Saxon character of the material from a large group of cemeteries eastwards of the Thames-Ouse watershed.

The document which forms the subject of this article is published by the kind permission of Capt. G. Wolryche-Whitmore, of Dudmaston Hall, near Bridgnorth, Shropshire, among whose family papers I came across it some years ago. It presents several peculiarities, and raises some questions which are perhaps easier to ask than to answer.

BY the courtesy of Mr. Arthur Deane, F.R.S.E., M.R.I.A., Curator of the Municipal Museum and Art Gallery, Belfast, I am permitted to direct attention to a vessel of outstanding interest among the magnificent collection of Irish prehistoric pottery under his charge. For help in studying it during visits to Belfast in September 1930 and 1931, I would express my gratitude also to his Staff and to Miss M. Gaffikin, whose photographs are here reproduced (pl. XL).

The pot (no. 332–1924) appears to be a degenerate example of a beaker of the Early Bronze Age. It came to the Museum with the collection of the late Mr. J. Theodore Richardson, then living at Cultra, co. Down, in July 1924: the manuscript list describes it as ‘No. 12, Cinerary Urn from near Bushmills’, but no positive evidence is extant to show that it was associated with a burial and no particulars of its discovery are forthcoming. This is the more regrettable on account of the rare occurrence of beakers in Ireland.

Plantation Farm, Shippea Hill, is situated in the south-east corner of the Fenland, some seven miles ENE. of Ely. The vast Fenland plain, formed essentially by the filling-up of a corrugated basin of Jurassic and boulder clays with post-glacial peats, silts, and clays, provides a field for the study of post-glacial changes of environment in relation to man without equal in Britain. As reported in a recent number of the Antiquaries Journal, a Research Committee has been formed at Cambridge under the presidency of Dr. Seward, F.R.S., to organize research in this work and to secure adequate co-operation of specialists in the different sciences. Notwithstanding great advances in the technical equipment of research, remarkably little has been added to our knowledge in this field since the publication of Skertchley's Geology of the Fenland in 1877. We have had, therefore, to begin at the beginning, and this report, which establishes the stratigraphical context of the Early Bronze Age in the deposits of the south-eastern fens, represents one of the first-fruits of our activities. Sir Charles Hiam very kindly allowed us to work on his land, and the Trustees of the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund generously made the excavations and borings possible. We may also take the opportunity here of thanking Mr. Charles Leaf for his part in the initial discovery of the site.