The discoveries at the Grange were made below the tennis-court in a garden that slopes down to the Hitchin road and the river Mimram; and when the terrace at the top of the slope was under construction some thirty years ago, some Roman relics came to light and are now in the Hertford museum. Immediately opposite, on the other bank of the river, are the foundations of a Roman villa in the garden of the Manor House.

This survey of Lochaneilean Castle was conducted in April 1935 on behalf of the Inverness Field Club, by which the expenses were defrayed. I gratefully acknowledge the warm interest shown in the undertaking by the Council of the Club, and the assistance which I received, in making the survey, from Dr. John Craig, F.S.A.Scot., and Mrs. Craig. The laird of Rothiemurchus, Lieut.-Col. John P. Grant, M.C., T.D., D.L., M.A., LL.B., Sheriff-substitute of Inverness, Elgin, and Nairn, kindly placed a boat and boatman and ladders at our disposal, and had the overgrowth removed from the ruins before our visit.

The ermita of Santa Maria de Quintanilla de las Viñas, although one of the most important examples of pre-Romanesque architecture and sculpture in Spain, was unknown to archaeologists until 1927.

Padre Enrique Flórez, writing in 1772, mentioned the building in connexion with the reported existence of Roman inscriptions in its vicinity, but, as he had not seen it, gave no description. J. A. Cean Bermudez, who likewise had not been on the spot, published a somewhat confused account of certain inscriptions. From Cean Bermudez, Hübner copied three enigmatic monograms said to be ‘in aedicula S. Mariae de las Viñas prope Quintanilla, non longe a Lara oppido’, and published them both in his Inscriptiones Hispaniae Latinae and Inscriptionum Hispaniae Christianarum Supplementum.

On 23rd December 1685 Arnold Quellin, Carver, signed an agreement with Patrick, Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, to provide statues of the four Stuart kings and a bust of the Earl himself, to be completed by 1st June the following year for a fee of £160. Although Quellin died in September 1686, the contract was evidently completed since all four statues and the bust are recorded at Glamis Castle in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Two of the statues, the James I and Charles I, as well as the bust are still at the castle today. Of the missing statues, one, the James II, is known from an engraving to resemble closely the James attributed to Grinling Gibbons which now stands in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, itself one of a series of statues of monarchs depicted as Roman conquerors. The other, the Charles II, may possibly have been similar to the Quellin Charles now at the Guildhall.

The document and statues provide new evidence of a sculptor popular in his day, whose reputation has been largely obscured by the fame of his master, Grinling Gibbons.

William Bell Scott (1811-90) was active as painter, poet, designer, teacher and pundit. His littleknown Antiquarian Gleanings (1851), a wide-ranging anthology of Northern antiquities, with thirty-eight colour plates, is here re-published in its entirety, with a new index, as an appendix to a paper which explores its design and content, and the networks of collectors, many of them associated with the Antiquarian Society of Newcastle, whose treasures Scott illustrated. Scott is presented neither as a great scholar, nor as a pioneering archaeologist, but his book is a distinguished artefact in its own right and his choice of subjects has stood the test of time, as well as presenting a vivid reflection of the interests and activities of provincial antiquaries in the period after the coming of the railways and immediately before the Great Exhibition of 1851.

G. E. Fox's reconstruction of fragments of painted plaster found in house XIV, I at Silchester is subjected to new scrutiny, and it is argued that, rather than belonging (as Fox thought) to a dado, they derive from two separate all-over patterns of the type described by German writers as Tapetenmuster. It is suggested that the decorations come from the adjacent rooms 22 and 29, and, by comparison with other examples of similar patterns in other parts of the Roman Empire, that they probably adorned the walls rather than the ceilings.

The town or settlement of ancient Aquae Sulis comprised an area of less than thirty acres. It was encircled on three sides by the river Avon, and almost surrounded by the lofty outliers of Cotswold and Mendip. The situation was an attractive one, and singularly appropriate for the important structures contained within the walled area. The baths occupied a central position in the town, and were in length at least one-third of its width from east to west.

The great medieval citadel of Damascus has not apparently received any serious notice in English; the important monographs, in French and German, which have been devoted to it are concerned principally with general architecture on the one part, and with epigraphy on the other. It is not intended in this article to deal further with these particular topics—indeed, the author is not qualified to do so—but to describe the citadel as a fortress and a monument of Islamic military art.

The very interesting Memoir of Mr. Claudius Rich, on the Remains of Ancient Babylon, having a tendency, as well from the facts set forth, in it, concerning the present State of the Site of that City, as from his Reasonings on them, to occasion doubts respecting the established opinions that have been entertained, on the authority of the Ancient Historians; it appeared to be almost a required duty from myself to the Publick, as having already written on the subject, to vindicate the consistency and truth of Ancient History; (as well as that of my own Statement, which was conformable to it:) for if all the Remains of Ancient Babylon, are found on one and the same side of the Euphrates, as Mr. Rich reports them to be; either that River must have altered its course, in that particular place, or the Statements of the Ancients must be wrong.

The origin of letters of ‘confraternity’, or of ‘participation in benefits’ for the two classes seem to be, as I hope to show later on, practically equivalent, is to be sought in the natural desire among those who were fighting against the corruptions of the world, to feel themselves fortified with the prayers of others engaged in the like conflict, and the no less natural wish to help their brethren in that struggle. Such associations would, equally naturally, be formed first and principally between monastic houses, since these formed, as it were, the entrenched camps into which religion retreated during the dark ages of Europe. But inasmuch as those thus associated were reckoned as in the fullest sense brothers, it was not long before the practical usefulness of these acts of confraternity became apparent in providing a means of arbitration in case of disputes between head and members in an abbey, as well as a sort of appeal against unjust treatment by a superior, or a remedy for fundamental incompatibility of temperament. Dom Ursmer Berlière, O.S.B., in an interesting article in the Mémoires of the Royal Belgian Academy, has investigated the jurisdictional side of these monastic confraternities, and therein relates the surprising experience of an abbot of St. Trond, who on approaching in the course of a journey the abbey of Brogne or St. Gérard, finds himself received with all ceremony, conducted at High Mass to the abbot's stall, and is informed that the officers of the monastery had to surrender to him their keys of office, and that he had the right to remit the punishment imposed upon a brother of the house. He asks the reason; and the only explanation his hosts can give, is that this is always done to an abbot of St. Trond on his first visit to Brogne. The author explains these proceedings by supposing the former existence of a formal act of confraternity between the houses, entirely forgotten on one side, and only partially remembered on the other.

As you were pleased to intrust me with the whole direction of opening the tumuli in your manors of Corton, Boyton, and Sherrington, this week, I shall give you the particulars of the discoveries as they occurred to me.

The study of Topography from the point of view of types and positions of settlements has hitherto received little attention in this country, although it often throws light upon difficult historical problems. Professor Maitland has summed up our knowledge of this subject in his characteristically brilliant and suggestive manner. He has pointed out that we are learning from the ordnance map, ‘that marvellous palimpsest’, that ‘in all probability we must keep at least two types before our minds. On the one hand there is what we might call the true village or the nucleated village. In the purest form of this type there is one and only one cluster of houses. It is a fairly large cluster; it stands in the midst of its fields, of its territory. On the other hand we may easily find a country in which there are few villages of this character. The houses which lie within the boundary of the parish are scattered about in small clusters; here two or three, there three or four.’

Having recently heard that the luxuriant hand of nature is already verifying my fears, as to the very site of a highly interesting Bath, in the island of Lipari, becoming disputable, I feel it a duty to forward, for the Society of Antiquaries, the Model of this edifice, which I referred to in my description of that Country.

I have lately perused with much attention what the very learned and ingenious Mr. Bryant hath insisted upon, with regard to an Apamean medaglion, the reverse of which is supposed to represent some circumstances of the Noachic deluge.