To the appreciation of the Society I submit an exhibit which seems to me well worthy of some further study and discussion. I have not brought over the original, because it is a ponderous mass of gold, worth almost £300, and because masses of gold are unfit to travel without an escort; but the workshop attached to the Saint-Germain Museum has made an excellent electrotype to be circulated with a developed drawing. The facsimile will be gilded and exhibited in the Museum, the original remaining confined to my safe, an appropriate location for heavy jewels which have a dangerous tendency to find their way, through improper hands, to the melting-pot. This extraordinary gorget—let us call it thus without prejudging its use—is in massive gold, at the standard of 800, and weighs 2,300 grammes, or nearly 74 oz. troy (fig. 1). It is said to have been unearthed in or about 1883 in Portugal, province of Alemtejo, not far from Evora, by a peasant who was digging at the foot of a tree. His spade must have been energetically handled, as it has chipped pieces of the metal in six neighbouring places. I do not think that the injury was done purposely by the finder in order to ascertain if it were truly gold. I have been told that he found three similar gorgets and that the two smaller ones were at once melted down, which I have some reason to disbelieve. The biggest gorget was first acquired by a Portuguese lady called Mattos, who bequeathed it to her daughter; the latter sold it to the father of M. Joaquim Arantes Ferreira da Silva, who, after having failed to sell it in turn to the Museum in Lisbon (then lacking funds), parted with it in favour of our Museum (June 1920), where it has been registered as number 67071, but as yet neither exhibited nor published.

The discovery of several coin-hoards including the first issue of King Alfred points to widespread disturbance and consequent insecurity which are easily explained by the Danish menace; and the exploration of Beeston Tor cave by the Rev. G. H. Wilson, of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, confirms this surmise, and at the same time gives a precise date to some jewellery which would otherwise remain conjectural. Incidentally it throws light on a discovery recorded in 1705, and enables an estimate to be made of the stylistic changes of two centuries in English craftsmanship.

The gold ornament here described was found over a hundred years ago at the north end of the hamlet of Galhampton and just within the parish of Castle Cary, but it has never been recorded before. It was recently presented to the Somerset Museum at Taunton Castle by Dr. R. E. H. Woodforde (who now resides in Hertfordshire). It had been handed down in his family, and was dug up by his great-grandfather, Colonel William Woodforde (1758–1844) in his garden on the west side and close to the main road from Castle Cary to Ilchester.

Le sol de l'ancienne civitas Elusatium, aujourd'hui Eauze dans le département du Gers, a à plusieurs reprises rendu au jour des objets antiques. Il y a deux ans y a été recueilli notamment l'anneau de bronze émaillé, de forme ovoïde, reproduit ci-dessous, de 3 centimètres et demi environ de diamètre maximum, dont la décoration se détache en rouge sur fond champlevé.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century Flanders had for a hundred years or more been the art centre of western Europe. Thence, and from the Rhenish provinces, most of the art movements sprang; and it was there that new ideas of technique and craftsmanship and new ways of looking at things had their birth. Henry VII, who since the age of five had lived abroad, favoured foreigners, especially Flemings, and encouraged trade with the Netherlands in every possible way. At his coronation he had the ‘trappour’ of his horse covered with stars made by ‘Hanche Dutchmen’; and he presented to Antwerp Cathedral a window with portraits of himself and his wife, Elizabeth of York.

Some years ago Dr. Blackmore discovered, on top of Laverstock Down, a hitherto unknown series of flint tools, turned up by the plough, which he named ‘Rectangular’. He has pointed out that it is in their extreme simplicity, together with constancy to type, that the skill in making them lies; for the manufacturers of these tools chipped flakes of one pattern, with several particular features, by the hundred. Modern practitioners know how many blows have to be given to knock a flake or a block into a required shape, but these people made one kind of tool with some halfdozen strokes, almost unfailingly, over and over again.