The interesting but detestable creature, the subject of these notes, does not seem hitherto to have inspired any enthusiasm in the antiquarian breast, for I have been unable to find any paper relating to it in the journals of archaeological societies. There is, however, a popular account in Princess Mary's Gift-book for 1914, consisting of a translation by the late Teixeira de Mattos of J. H. Fabre's story of the ant-lion and its habits, with a coloured plate, both of which accurately reproduce its pernicious activities.

Immediately within the gates of the North Ambulatory of the Abbey Church, and west of the table-tomb of Abbot Estney, is the marble slab which is assumed to cover the remains of Sir Thomas Parry, treasurer of the household of Queen Elizabeth and steward also of the manors of the newly re-created dean and chapter of Westminster. Thomas ap Harry was the son and heir of Henry Vaughan of Tretower. He married Anne, daughter of Sir William Reade of Boarstall in Buckinghamshire, was knighted in 1558, died in 1560, and was buried in the Abbey Church on 15th December in that year. In 1562 his widow, Dame Anne, surrendered her lease of ‘one great mansion house within the precinct’ known as ‘Vaughan's House’, and was granted in return a lease of what in an older day had been the prior's house, which the dean had just vacated and which now is built up in the later Ashburnham House.

The Company of Parish Clerks was incorporated as ‘The Master, Wardens, Assistants and Brethren of the Parish Clerks of the Parish Churches of the City and Suburbs of London and the Liberties thereof, the City of Westminster, the Borough of Southwark and the Fifteen Out-Parishes adjacent’ by King Charles the First by letters patent dated 27th February 1639. The Company had received several charters previously.

Both finds belong to the latest portion of the Irish Bronze Age, Montelius's fifth period (1150-800 B.C.). The first was recently acquired by the Royal Irish Academy. The circumstances of its discovery are obscure; no more definite information being obtainable than that the objects were dug up near an old ruined castle in co. Westmeath about the month of January, 1922. It includes a bronze socketed celt, and twenty-four complete and one imperfect cast bronze rings. The objects are well covered with an agreeable grey-green patina, with the exception of one ring which was scraped clean, presumably to see of what metal it was composed. The looped axe-head is of characteristic Irish type with oval mouth and broad cutting edge. A little below the mouth it is ornamented with a raised band, the mouth being similarly encircled. The largest ring, which has an external diameter of 4.3 inches, is hollow; the remainder have been cast solid. The illustration (pi. XIII) will dispense with a detailed description of the various rings.

The archaeology of the Black Sea coast quickly attracted attention when the Russians conquered the Crimea at the end of the eighteenth century, and the Scythic barrows of the Steppes began to be carefully excavated almost as soon; but it was not till the fifties and sixties that the less imposing antiquities of northern Russia found any one to study them even among Russians. West European interest naturally came later, the pioneers were first the Finn Aspelin in the seventies and next the Baron de Baye, who about 1890 sought to throw light from the East upon the Merovingian and other Teutonic styles which were his special province.

The extent of the Roman settlements in Cornwall forms an interesting subject for inquiry. Particularly noteworthy is the absence of military roads; and in the subjoined notes an hypothesis is advanced which may account for this.

A stretch of about four yards of the Roman Stane Street, or rather the core of it, which I have recently laid bare at Alfoldean, near Slinfold, Sussex, was made up of two layers of biggish slabs of local stone set in sand on top of the local clay. The surface of the Roman road had been used in the make-up of the modern road (1810), but plenty of it is scattered about in the fields, and i t is quite obvious that it was composed of three elements: chert from the lower greensand at Petworth and Fittleworth, flints from the South Downs, and sea-pebbles from the south coast, probably Shoreham. This definite datum, and the knowledge that near Rowhook on the line of the Rowhook-Farley Heath road, as marked on the Ordnance map, was a field traditionally called ‘Stone Field’, prompted me to test the line for road-metal, after having obtained permission from Mr. Lee Steere, of Ockley, and a series of friendly landowners and farmers.

By the kindness of Captain Carlson, of Clifton, I have been able to make drawings of a pair of celts which came into his possession soon after I had initiated him into the mysteries of prehistoric flint implements. The smaller, and in my opinion undoubtedly the older, of the two, is ground and polished at the cutting-end; and the ground surface becomes narrower as it extends along the middle of each face for the greater part of the length (fig. I).

About three years ago it was suggested to me by Dr. Tapp that I should investigate further the stones of Stonehenge in the hope that additional light might be shed on the vexed question of their origin.