Antiquaries Journal, Vol. II (October 1922), p. 344, n. 1 : for (Nature, 29th April 1922, p. 563) read (Nature, 1st April 1922, p. 411).

To the Alexandrian Claudius Ptolemy, who flourished about the middle of the second century after Christ, belongs the honour of having achieved the final systematisation of the results of ancient research in the two sciences of astronomy and geography. His treatise on Geography continued to be the standard text-book on its own subject, as his Almagest was the standard text-book on astronomy, until the brilliant discoveries of the fifteenth century called the attention of Europe to their defects.

There are indications that some whole relics of saints in England, who had never been canonized officially, were subjected to a change in status during the Middle Ages, being demoted and sometimes promoted again. Some of these demotions follow the fourth Lateran Council of 1215 when it was decreed that relics newly found could not be venerated without papal permission. In this article a few of these cases are examined, in particular those of St William of Norwich, St Amphibalus and his companions at St Albans, and the Venerable Bede at Durham; and in the light of these, the movements of the relics of St Swithun and St Birinus at Winchester are also examined. The site of the last resting place of St William of Norwich is discussed in an Appendix.

Through the activity and skill of native and European excavators in Egypt during the last few years, our knowledge of Egyptian archaeology has been much increased; and nearly every collection of Egyptian antiquities in Europe has been substantially enlarged. Curiously enough, however, the contents of certain sections of these collections have remained without many additions; and among such sections must be placed the weapons of war of the ancient Egyptians, who lived before the eighteenth dynasty. There are in the various Egyptian collections a comparatively large number of bronze daggers and knives, and other weapons which are supposed to have been made during the rule of the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty over Egypt; but, in many cases, the proofs that would make the belief a certainty are wanting. When, however, by means of inscriptions, or the knowledge of the circumstances which attended the discovery of certain bronzes, we can fix their date beyond all doubt, it is most important to put such facts on record. The object of the following notes is to describe some of the most interesting of Egyptian bronze weapons now known to us.

The local government in this country and most countries in Europe is carried out by Corporations of Cities and Boroughs, the head of which is a mayor or corresponding official. One of the most important duties of local government is the preservation of law and order, and for this purpose, in former times, the mayor was usually authorized by charter to enlist men or ‘sergeants’ as they were called, later to be called ‘sergeants-at-mace’. These men were armed with a mace which was both a weapon and a staff of office. Originally a weapon only, it was later replaced by a ceremonial equivalent. There was usually also, from the fourteenth century and probably earlier, a ‘Great’ or mayor's mace, carried by the mace-bearer, usually a sergeant, which represented the authority of the mayor and was carried before him on formal occasions. Both of these types of mace exist in their ceremonial form today and are carried on formal occasions, although the sergeant's former duties have to a great extent now been taken over by the police. The sergeant's maces are small, averaging about one pound: the mayor's are larger, usually about ten pounds. The powers of these sergeants were, of course, limited to within the boundary of the city or borough to which they belonged.

When St. Cuthbert's tomb was opened in 1827, the jewelled pectoral cross (pl. LXXV) was found ‘deeply buried among the remains of the robes which were nearest to the breast of the saint’. It had thus escaped disturbance in 1538 at the time of the savage ransacking of the tomb during the Dissolution, and it can be inferred from the circumstances in which the saint's stole and maniple were found that the Commissioners had ceased their plundering before the body had been fully stripped of its wrappings.

The aim of this paper is to offer as full a discussion as possible of the best-known portrait of Henry VII. Information from a variety of sources elucidates the context in which the portrait was painted and the nature of its iconography; in particular, evidence is presented to show that the red rose was a symbol of great personal significance to Henry. With regard to the portrayal of Henry himself it is suggested that his face conforms essentially to an approved ‘pattern’ that had been recently reworked and updated, and that the frequently expressed modern view of the portrait as representing a mean and crafty character results from a misinterpretation of the artist's intentions. In a final section attention is given to the question of the identity of the artist, whose name remains unknown.

Alstoe Mount is a fine example of a motte and bailey castle, situated 1 mile north-east of Burley village and 3 miles north-east of Oakham; it is on the east side of the road from Burley to Cottesmore, and immediately north-west of Alstoe House (fig. 1). The mount is on the level summit of the long ridge running northwards into Lincolnshire, at a height of 490 ft. O.D., and is about 150 ft. above the vale of Catmose. Towards the south the high ground terminates in a spur running to Burley, and possibly the mount was placed to safeguard the passage of traffic from this direction, near the point where it branched, either south-east to Stamford or northwards to Lincoln.

The megalithic cult of southern and western Europe appears to have been largely seaborne. It was spread in western Britain, too, by a people who used the northern sections of the Atlantic route. This paper deals with the distributions of different types of megalith in the Irish Sea basin and in its northward extension. It describes the burial and ceremonial monuments of the lands which front on to a mainly land-locked sea. The routeways of the Irish Sea were used to diffuse the megalithic cult over a long period, and the better favoured coastlands attracted large colonies of megalith builders (see fig. i) comparable in size to those of any section of the Atlantic route. The controlling geographical features such as tidal currents and their influence on routeways; or diffusion in relation to areas of lighter soil, or patches of bare rock, or wind-swept coastlands (i.e. the less densely forested areas); are of vital importance, and will be discussed elsewhere.