Close to the hamlet of Woolsthorpe (the birth place of Sir Isaac Newton), in the parish of Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, on Thursday, 21st January 1932, the miners quarrying ore for the Frodingham Iron & Steel Co. unearthed a remarkably perfect furnace or bloomery of the Roman period. In shape it was box-like, roughly but carefully hand-moulded of grey indurated clay of the local Upper Lias formation; a fragment of an ammonite fossil was found in a crack. The length was nearly 3 ft., the upper or north-west end was about 22 in., and the lower or south-east end about 24 in. in width. The top was practically level and flat, but the bottom dipped, slightly from the northwest end for about 21 in., then very sharply, so that the depth increased from 15 in. at the north-west end to 21 in. at the other. The sides were irregular, about 6 in. thick at most, and in the middle of each was a tuyere hole, some 6 in. in diameter, sharply splayed externally. The ends were open; the north-west one was evidently the charging, and the other the tipping end. The actual bottom was only about half an inch thick of the same clay, but below this were 3 or 4 in. of a different bluish clay and under it some apparently partly burned oolitic limestone brought from near by. The natural soil is the ironstone whose quarrying led to the discovery of the furnace (pl. XLIV, fig. 1).

Abergairn Castle is finely situated on the summit of an isolated kaim about half a mile west of the upper outlet of the Pass of Ballater, and about the same distance north-east of St. Kentigern's ancient church, near the junction of the Gairn with the Dee. The castle had commanded a magnificent view, now partly obscured to the south-west by graceful birch trees, of Glenmuick and the hills which enclose it, culminating in the grand outline of Lochnagar. Westward and northward the ground rises and hides the valleys of the Dee and the Gairn. To the east and south the kaim sinks abruptly into a wide bottom extending to the mouth of the Pass of Ballater. Through this bottom runs a tiny stream that drains the Pass ; and the flats adjoining its bed are still largely in marsh, so that before modern drainage this must have provided a strong defence for the site.

The question discussed in this paper arose in the course of a review of the first volume of the Registrum Antiquissimum, a work which has given a fresh impetus to medieval studies. For the first time in England the attempt is being made to print in full the whole archives of a medieval cathedral. The greater part of volume i is taken up with the fine collection of royal charters to the year 1189, the texts of the originals (where they survive) being in each case collated with those in the cartulary. Most if not all of the original charters were printed more than twenty years ago by the Rev. H. E. Salter, who pointed out that seven of those granted by Henry II between 1155 and 1165 must all have been written by the same scribe. These seven charters are not interconnected (save perhaps two of them): they grant, or confirm the grant of, various rights and of separate properties; they were issued at different times and from places as far apart as Windsor and Rouen. Nothing is common to them all but the script in which they are written.

The site of the following discovery is a gravel-pit owned by Mr. George Young on the west side of the Fosse Way, midway between Slaughter Bridge and Stow Bridge, and 1½ miles NNE. of Bourton-on-the-Water. In the course of digging, during the past few years, a series of circular ditches has been observed in the gravel on three sides of the pit. Unfortunately it has not been possible to plan the ditches, of which there seem to be three. Recently a ditch was cleared out for about a quarter of its length, and appeared to have a diameter of about ioo ft. The ditch was V-shaped, 6 to 6½ ft. wide and 3 to 5 ft. deep, with a stiff red clay filling, in the upper part of which were embedded some oolite stones. The stones occurred over the middle of the ditch or towards its inner side, and may possibly have once lined the sides of the ditch, and slipped out of position as the ditch filled up. A section of the ditch with the stones is shown in pl. LIII, fig. 1, taken after the top soil, about 12 in. deep, containing late Roman pottery, had been cleared away.