The silver spoons in the Dorchester Museum, exhibited by Capt. Acland, F.S.A., were discovered in 1898 or 1899 on the Somerleigh Court Estate, in Dorchester, a prolific Roman site. The coins belonging to the find, over fifty in number, are all siliquae, dating from Julian II to Honorius (A. D. 360–400); among them is one coin of Licinius I, A. D. 317, which is probably intrusive. The coins, examined by my colleague, Mr. H. Mattingly, and to be published in the Numismatic Chronicle later in the present year, thus give the second half of the fourth century as the probable date of the find, a period with which the general character of the spoons is in agreement. The silver object figured with the spoons belongs to a small class represented in England and perhaps used as manicure knives. There is a specimen with a long handle and smaller blade in the British Museum.

In April last the Society published two gold crescents found in Cornwall and now in Truro Museum; and in view of the proximity of Ireland, it is not surprising that others have been found; but the present exhibit (figs. 1–3) is the most important of its kind, being the only case in which anything to indicate a precise date has been found with gold crescents anywhere. Mr. George Penrose, Local Secretary, and Curator of Truro Museum, sent with the three objects in question the following information:

‘The two gold crescents (figs. 1, 2) and bronze celt (fig. 3) sent for exhibition were found together, close to the edge of a low cliff at Harlyn or Perlaze Bay, near Padstow, Cornwall, sometime during the year 1864.

Hoards of ancient bronze, however unimportant they may seem, are apt to throw much light on the Bronze Age, and all such finds should be placed on record.

Deposited on loan in the Colchester Museum is a bronze founder's hoard discovered in a cavity of the chalk at Grays Thurrock, Essex, in 1906. From the number of pieces and the variety of types comprised it is certainly remarkable, but has remained unpublished. It comprises some 298 pieces, including several fine implements and weapons, numerous fragments of others broken and worn-out and collected as metal, lumps of copper and bronze, waste pieces and imperfect castings, and a portion of a bronze mould for casting socketed celts. The various items are tabulated in groups:

33 socketed celts, lengths' 4·9 to 2·7 in.

71 imperfect ditto and fragments.

I winged celt, length 4·8 in.

2 imperfect ditto, similar.

Among the socketed celts one fine specimen, length 4·9 in., square in section and quite plain except for a bold moulding round the mouth, is worthy of notice. The remainder range in length from 4·4 to 2·7 in., and vary considerably in the form of their sockets and in style of decoration.

Since the excavations at Avebury it has been a mystery that the Ditch inside the bank surrounding the greatest stone circle in the world should be thirty feet deep on its south side. A walk round the fosse as it remains to-day reveals the fact that it is deeper on the south side, where the ground-level is higher than on the north; on the latter the ordinary level is 510 ft. O.D., while on the former it is 527 ft. This seems to point to the conclusion that a ditch was planned with a level bottom irrespective of the original level of the ground at any one point, and that the Ditch was not therefore made the same depth all round. The enormous labour of digging this huge trench 30 ft. deep, over 40 ft. wide at top, and 17 ft. at the bottom was incurred for some definite object. Ordinarily the theory of a prehistoric ditch is that it was to keep out man or animals; in this case 10 ft. of depth with fairly steep sides would be impassable for either; therefore to accdunt for the extraordinary exertion of going down 20 ft. deeper than necessary we must adopt another hypothesis, and the fact that the ditch is now deeper on the south, where the ground is highest, gives a clue to the problem.

It has long been accepted that the site of the church of the Austin Canons of Merton was irretrievably lost, or at least irrecoverable by reason of the railway which runs across the enclosed precinct of the priory. Such portions of the other priory buildings which remain above the ground have been adequately described by our Fellow Mr. P. M. Johnston in the Surrey Archaeological Collections, vol. xxvii. These are somewhat remote, and, indeed, on the other side of the river Wandle from the site the investigation of which is presently to be described.

The four flint implements described and illustrated in this article have been found at the following places in the county of Suffolk, viz. Southwold, Charsfield, Hoxne, and Nacton. The Southwold specimen (figs, 1, 1A, and 1B) was found lying at the foot of a low cliff bordering the beach at this place by Mrs. Edgar Turner of Walberswick, who has been so good as to lend the implement to the Ipswich Museum. The specimen exhibits the unchanged black colour of the original flint, carries very little ‘gloss’, and is unabraded and unworn. Unfortunately the implement has had, at some time, a piece broken from it and replaced, but the drawings show clearly where this fracturing occurred.

In medieval Catalonia, or perhaps in the neighbouring province of Valencia, the manufacture of certain objects made of wood covered with thin sheets of brass bearing designs in relief seems to have formed a flourishing industry. The brass sheets employed, which covered practically the whole visible exterior surface and gave the appearance of articles of solid metal, were embossed by means of moulds into which the thin sheets were forced, so that their outer surfaces reproduced the designs of the mould. The process used is one which seems to have been in more or less general employment in medieval Europe; and many examples of it, frequently carried out in the precious metals, are to be found upon book-covers and caskets, and upon crosses, reliquaries, and other articles for ecclesiastical use. Long before the objects which I am about to describe were made, Rhenish, French, Italian, and Spanish craftsmen were using the process. Writing probably about the first half of the eleventh century, the monk Theophilus describes the process, especially in its application to silver and to copper gilt. He says that the stamps should be made of iron ‘thick as the size of a finger, wide as three or four fingers, in length one (foot)’, on which stamps, ‘in resemblance of seals,’, the designs are sculptured, not too deeply, ‘but moderately and carefully’. The metal to be used should be thinner than for ordinary relief-work. A sheet (in the case of silver), after having been cleansed with finely pulverized charcoal and polished with scraped chalk, is to be laid between the stamp (which rests face upward on an anvil) and a thick sheet of lead, and the lastmentioned is to be beaten strongly with a hammer. A sheet longer than a stamp can be moved so as to expose a fresh portion when one or more portions have been stamped.

So many discoveries have been made in the gravels of this region during the last few years, following upon a number which have been noted previously, that it seems advisable to treat them as forming a single body of evidence, which goes far to trace the evolution of the valley in Pleistocene and subsequent times.

During the month of September 1920 excavations were carried out by the Museum Curator at Rabat, in the vicinity of the Roman Villa Museum.

Sir Martin Conway's paper on portable reliquaries, tracing the origin of the familiar gabled type, includes a list of the Irish specimens; to this list it is possible to add another, which has twice been mentioned, but I believe neither described nor illustrated. Its existence is not generally known, for it was not alluded to by either Coffey or Romilly Allen in their works on Celtic Art. This reliquary was formerly deposited with the Royal Irish Academy by its owner, Mr. William Monsell, of Tervoe, co. Limerick, afterwards Lord Emly. It is described in one of the old Museum Registers as ‘A Shrine for holding relics 4¼ inches long, 3¾ high, and 1¾ broad. In shape of a house with roof sloping from both sides and ends. One side is deficient, but supplied with cork. Formed of wood with brass-ornamented ridge-pole, and brass bending at angles. One side and the adjoining slope of the roof is ornamented ingeniously with inlaying and enamel, the side having two, and the roof one circular ornament divided into compartments, which are subdivided by divisions radiating from their centres.’ The shrine was returned to Mr. Monsell in 1872. A plaster cast of it is, however, in the collection, from which the illustration is made. The colours in which the cast is painted show that the metal plates are bronze, not brass. The reliquary opens by means of hinges placed at the back, the upper part being a true lid. The ridge-pole terminates in animals' heads. The bronze plates covering the front of the shrine are ornamented with a species of fret pattern; they are inset with three roundels arranged like those on the Lough Erne and Copenhagen shrines. The empty centres of the roundels may have contained half-beads of amber (pl. IX, fig. 1).