I am very conscious of the great honour which you have conferred upon me in re-electing me President of what is the oldest and most important society of its kind. Every year the charge which rests upon the holder of this office becomes heavier as the boundaries of knowledge are pushed outwards and more light is thrown into the dark places of the past.

Explorations made in the interior of Tripolitania during the last fifty years, and intensified since 1946, have brought to light a series of inscriptions which promise to yield much useful information relating to the language and life of the indigenous population of Libya during the Roman period. These inscriptions, which are best described as ‘Latino-Libyan’, are inscribed in Latin characters in a language which, although still largely unknown, must have been in common use between the Fezzan and the Tripolitanian coast during the first four centuries A.D. Basically, this language may be a great deal older than the Roman period and related to the equally obscure language of the Libyan inscriptions of French North Africa. Similarly, it must in many areas have survived the Arab invasions, and may be the origin of the Berber language still spoken in the western Gebel of Tripolitania.

The axe-hammer illustrated (pl. xviii b and fig. 1) was found by Mr. J. E. Best in 1944 on the surface of Fifield Down about one mile north-west of Fifield Bavant, south Wilts. Unfortunately for dating purposes it was not associated with other objects, but nevertheless is of great interest in that it is made of spotted dolerite or preselite from the Presely mountains, Pembrokeshire, and is of a type very rarely found in the southern lowlands. Fortunately, preselite is a rock easily identified macroscopically, and I am grateful to Dr. F. S. Wallis and the South-Western Sub-Committee for the Petrological Identification of Stone Implements for confirming the identification. In this instance it was agreed that slicing was unnecessary as the owner had expressed hesitancy in permitting the operation to be performed, and it was obvious that little purpose would be served by defacing so perfect a specimen for microscopic examination.

Some years ago, in the spring of 1941 or 1942, when Mr. J. Farley of Court Farm, Holne, near Ashburton, was cultivating an outlying field near Ridge Cross to the east of the village, a silver coin was turned up from a depth of 6–9 in. by the plough. On another occasion Mr. Farley found one when digging in his garden, and he put both of them into a little canister on the mantelpiece where his wife kept odds and ends. They remained there even when the Farleys left Court Farm in 1947 for a cottage at Play Cross, until the vicar, the Rev. W. Duke, to whose good offices I am greatly indebted, saw them in 1949 and sent them to Mr. K. Roberts, F.N.S., of Newton Abbot, for identification.

The following paper is to record certain prehistoric remains in an area already famous for the seventh-century oratory of St. Pieran. Several years ago I commenced a rough survey of the whole district and discovered (within an approximately twelve-mile radius) occupation sites yielding relics of Mesolithic facies and Iron Age and Medieval antiquities. Most of the remains are associated with the extensive tracts of blown sands that lie behind and on either side of the bays of Holywell and Perran. It was the widespread surface occurrence of potsherds and kitchen-midden material within the area that pointed to the possible existence of the habitational sites lying beneath them. Accordingly I dug trial trenches at several widely separated positions, and nearly all these exposed remains of shallow shell-middens.

In a previous volume of this journal a piece of ornamental openwork in lead from excavations at Whitby Abbey was published as a medieval ventilator-screen of the type described by the Rev. Christopher Woodforde. These are likewise of lead and of obvious Gothic shape. The Whitby piece was accordingly dated to the late thirteenth century. A more detailed examination shows, however, that the Whitby openwork is neither Gothic in shape nor a ventilator-screen (pl. xixa).

A Little more than a century ago, in October 1848, an inscribed iron sword of the tenth century (pl. xxi a) was presented to the British Museum by J. Hayward, Esquire, of Beaumont Manor, Lincoln. The sword was stated to have been found during the widening of the river Witham opposite Monks Abbey, Lincoln.

The size of this huge window is 1,680 square feet. It measures 72 ft. high by 31 ft. wide. The tracery compartments number 144; the main panels, each 1 yard square, 117. In addition there are 27 canopy head-pieces. Thus in all there are no fewer than 288 openings, all filled with ancient glass.

Of the 117 panels, 27 compose an Old Testament series from the Creation to the Death of Absalom. Below these, 81 (9 rows of 9 panels) make up the Apocalypse series. Below these again are 9 panels of Saints, Kings, and Ecclesiastics.

The sand-pit at Glaston, Rutland, from which came the example of a rare type of Celto-Saxon fibula recorded in the Antiquaries Journal, xxviii, 169 ff., has since yielded evidence of a small cemetery. By way of preface it may be noted that the settlement which the cemetery represents is situated at a point close to the junction of the Oolitic Northampton Sands with the Lias, an observation stressed by Reginald A. Smith in his article on Anglo-Saxon remains in volume i of the Victoria History of Northamptonshire in regard to Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in the country. It is also applicable to the other known cemeteries in Rutland itself, the selection being determined by accessibility to an adequate water-supply. Reference to the geological map in the V.C.H., Rutland, i, shows that the choice at Glaston follows the general rule on an outlier that thrusts into the Lias as far as Uppingham from the north-south Oolitic band that covers the eastern half of the county.