fences of some lately excavated Roman camps on the Continent, among them one on the Teutoburger Wald, south-west of Osnabrück, partially explored by Dr. F. Knocke. The inference the lecturer drew was that, judging from the facts we have at present to guide us, we seem warranted in regarding Kirkbuddo and most, though not perhaps all, of the Roy camps as relics of a Roman invasion of what is now Scotland. Further study of the subject, however, was required. No good purpose would be served, he remarked in conclusion, by extending his investigations so as to include an account of other earthworks that either on the Ordnance map, or according to the popular belief of particular localities, were rightly or wrongly classed as Roman. Very few of them lay any distance outside the district already traversed; and their inclusion in, or their exclusion from, the list of camps that might be more or less certainly Roman would add but little to our knowledge of the nature and extent of the Roman occupation. The lecture, like the two last, was illustrated by limelight views. The sixth and concluding lecture was delivered on November 19. Continuing his review of the archeological evidence for a Roman occupation of North Britain, Dr. Macdonald referred to certain roads that had been ascribed to the Romans by the older writers. In districts that the Romans merely overran, or held a short time by force of arms, via publica, as these roads had been said to be, were not to be looked for. The beginnings of some of these, however, might go back to Roman times. Noticing next the pathways at Kincardine and other mosses, formed by trees or logs of wood laid across each other, he remarked that they suggested comparison with those discovered in 1818 in the province of Drenthe, in Holland, and identified by Dutch and German archeologists as the long bridges of Tacitus. The so-called Roman bridges of Scotland were all, he believed, mediæval structures. The lecturer finished this branch of the evidence by an account of the form and supposed history of the building known as Arthur's O'on, demolished in 1743 to build a mill-dam. Proceeding to sum up both branches of the evidence as bearing on the nature and extent of the Roman occupation, he gave, first of all, a brief sketch of the physical features of the country, and the social and political condition of the inhabitants at the time of the Roman invasion, so far as the scanty materials available enabled him to do. For the ethnology of North Britain at that epoch, he adopted the views of Professor Rhys, as being, he thought, most consistent with the few facts of which they had some certainty. According to that authority, that part of the island was then occupied by three distinct peoples-two Celtic and one pre-Celtic-that must have differed in the degree of civilization they had reached. The nhabitants of the country north of the Forth and Clyde isthmus-the Caledonians of Tacitus and Dio-were composed chiefly of the preCeltic and one of the Celtic peoples, although the other Celtic people had also a footing north of the isthmus. The lecturer then explained how the statements of the classical writers might be read so as to harmonize with this view, and to indicate at the same time the course and probable limits of the campaigns of Agricola and Severus. After a brief reference to the frontier policy of Hadrian, he passed on to the rebellion of the Brigantes, the advance of Lollius Urbicus to the Forth and Clyde, and his raising of a vallum there. The true significance of that barrier, which was apparently held by the Romans only for a short time, seemed to him to be a difficult question. If it meant an extension of the province, even in a military sense, there seemed no sufficient reason for its being so soon abandoned. It might, however, only mark out the inter-isthmian territory as a kind of protectorate, the inhabitants of which were entitled to look to Rome for help when harassed by their northern foes. The expedition of Severus was avowedly a punitive one. If the Strathmore and Aberdeenshire camps described in the preceding lectures were Roman, they might mark the route some portion of his forces took. But this was only conjecture. When the Picts and Scots appeared on the stage of history as the enemies of the subject or protected Britons of the North, the aid afforded by the latter to the Romans became more and more fitful and uncertain, till at last the troubles of the Empire led to their withdrawal from the whole island. Dr. Macdonald concluded by expressing the hope that the excavations lately carried on so successfully by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland would, in some way or other, be continued, as it was only by such means that the knowledge of the Roman antiquities of Scotland and the Roman period of its history could be made more complete. On the motion of Mr. J. Balfour Paul, Lyon King-of-Arms, Dr. Macdonald was awarded a hearty vote of thanks for his very scholarly and interesting series of lectures. Mr. Paul said he was sure Dr. Macdonald had thrown great light upon the Roman occupation of Scotland, and that his lectures, if they did nothing else, would induce people to take a greater interest in the subject, and, perhaps, supply funds wherewith to continue the excavations already begun. The Rome correspondent of the Times writes under date November 26: An important decision regarding the export duties laid on such articles of commerce as fall under the very vague and elastic heading of "antiquities" has just been rendered by the Court of Appeals in Rome. As is known to all who have attempted to purchase such articles here, the export duty of 20 per cent. levied on them by a law which is an inheritance from the Papal Government is not only a grave charge, but one which it is sometimes embarrassing to determine, the value of such things being purely fantastic. The law, known as the Pacca edict, applies only to the late Papal territory, each one of the ancient realms of Italy having still its ancient regulation, the duty from Tuscany being I per cent., and that from the former Austrian possessions nil. The Roman Court has decided that it only applies to such objects as are recognised as "precious,' i.e., as of exceptional artistic or historical value. The limitation is as vague as the old definition, and perhaps the best results of the decision will be to compel the Government to pass a general and rational law, under which the possessor of an object having value from its antiquity shall be free to carry it out of Italy. Professor Villari, when Minister of Public Instruction, proposed a sensible and comprehensive law, which, while imposing a small duty and the necessity of a permission to export, for the purpose of controlling the exportation of the heirlooms of the nation, made it indispensable for the Government either to purchase or permit the exportation. This law, like most of those which the public good has called for, has ever since lain covered by the petty legislation for electoral purposes, which impedes all useful reforms other than those demanded by the constituents of the ministerial deputies. If an object is precious and indispensable to the honour or history of Italy, it is reasonable that its exportation should be prevented, but only by purchase; for it is an outrage that a man may not dispose according to his interests or necessities of articles which are his unquestionable property. Some railway constructors in the Indian territory have uncovered in the silt underlying deposits of the Quaternary period countless prehistoric skeletons. They seemed to be those of warriors with smashed skulls, or penetrating arrow wounds. They were buried in circles, the bodies radiating with the feet towards the centre, and food-bowls had been placed at each elbow. Professor Walters, becoming interested in the find, dug pits over an area of thirty acres, and disclosed a battle-ground of an extinct race, where no less than 100,000 men must have been buried. The Athenæum learns that the ancient remains discovered at Thermopyla while the Greek troops were making entrenchments during the late war have been recently examined by the French School of Athens. They consist of a strong square building of about eight mètres on each side, belonging, as it seems to the time of the Persian wars, and of a necropolis of later date. The former, which was thought at the beginning to be a small Doric temple, is a watchtower built on a hill in order to command one of the mountain paths which turned Thermopylae in the rear, probably the famous path of Ephialtes. The latter consists of a number of tombs cut in the soft rock of the place at a mile distance from the springs of warm water which gave its name to the pass. They did not, however, prove very rich, containing only common unpainted pottery and iron arms. A coin of Delphi of the Roman imperial times shows that the burialplace, the origin of which is perhaps Hellenistic, continued to be used till the Roman epoch. BOOK AND OTHER SALES. THE ASHBURNHAM LIBRARY. MESSRS. SOTHEBY, WILKINSON AND HODGE com. menced the sale of the second portion of the Ashburnham Library (Gadbury to Petrarch) on the 6th inst. Very high prices were realized, especially for the printed Books of Hours. Some of the best in the first two days were the following: George Gascoigne's Whole Works, 1587, £40. Gazius de Conservatione Sanitatis, 1491, £33 10s. De Gheyn, Maniement d'Armes, rich Le Gascon binding, 1607, £55. Giam. bullari, Feste nelle Nozze di Duca di Firenze, on vellum, 1539, £26 10s. (sold for £10 in 1859). Glanville, De Proprietatibus Rerum, Trevisa's translation, title and last leaf in facsimile, Wynkyn de Worde, n.d., £195. Gower, Confessio Amantis, printed by Caxton, 1483, having 191 lines only instead of 222 lines, 188. Grafton's Chronicle, 1570, with a letter of Thos. Howard, Duke of Norfolk (beheaded 1572), in the margins, £70. Gratia Dei de Esculo, Quaestiones in Aristotelis Physica, on vellum, 1484, £68. Gringoire, Les Folles Enterprises, fine copy with rough edges, Paris, 1505, £106. Gueroult, Hymnes du Temps, first edition, Lyon, 1560, £20 10s. Habitus Præcipuorum Populorum, by Jost Amman, Nürnb., 1577, £29. Hakluyt's Voyages, with the rare map and Cadiz voyage, 15981600, £275. Hall's Satires, with Certaine Worthye Manuscript Poems, 1597-99, £34. Hardyng's Chronicle, 1543, £26. Harman's Groundworke of Conny-Catching, 1592, 25. Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure, 1554, 55. Hay, Confutation of the Abbot of Crosraguels Masse, Edinburgh, 1563, £29. Vie et Faits Notables de Henri de Valois, 1589, £46. Heylyn's Historie of the Sabbath, dedication copy to King Charles I., 1636, £31. Heywood, The Spider and the Flie, 1556, £36 105. Higden's Poly. chronicon, Caxton, 1482, wanting forty-six leaves, 201; Wynkyn de Worde's edition of the same, imperfect, 1495, £36. Holbein's Dance of Death (in French), first edition, Lyon, 1538, £41. Holinshed's Chronicles, 1577, £58. Engravings (ninety-one) by the Brothers Hopfer, £50. Heures à Paris, T. Kerver, 1522, 60; another edition, G. Tory, Paris, 1527, £31; another copy, much finer, £141. Heures de Paris, Kerver, 1552, £52. Horæ ad Usum Romanum, Bourges, 1489, £179; another, printed on vellum, Paris, Marnef, 1492, 105. Heures de Rome, on vellum, S. Vostre, 1498, 101; another, by Kerver, 1499, on vellum, 165; another, by Hardouyn, on vellum, 1520, £84. Heures de Rome, with Tory borders, very choice copy, delicately illuminated, 1525, £860; another, same date, but inferior, 119; another, Paris, O. Maillard, 1541, £530. Heures de Rouan, Paris, S. Vostre, 1528, £175. Hora secundum Usum Sarum, on vellum, Paris, 1536, 200. Horologium Devotionis, Colon., s.a., 30. Hortulus Anima, Argent., 1503, £46. Hortus Sanitatis, Paris, 1539, £52.-Athenæum, December 1I. [The six days' sale closed on December 11; the total sum realized was £18,649 9s.-ED.] OTHER SALES. Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge concluded on Saturday the two days' sale of the collection of coins and medals formed by the late Mr. George Augustus Pepper-Staveley, of Crawley, Sussex. The 317 lots realized a total of £1,113 65., and included the following: Henry IV. noble, of the second coinage, very rare, king in ship, three ropes from stern, one from prow, 10 5s. (Spink); Henry VIII. Sovereign, first coinage, 1509, 13 15s. (Verity); Elizabeth ryal or noble, very rare, with the hand mint-mark, 13 15s. (Spink); James I. thirty-shilling piece, king enthroned, the background richly diapered, £10 125. (Verity); Anne "Vigo" five-guinea piece, 1703, £16 (Spink); Charles I. silver twentyshilling piece, 1643, L10 12s. (Verity); George III. pattern five-guinea piece, 1777, laureate nude bust to right with long flowing hair, excessively rare, £40 (Spink); George III. five-pound piece, 1820, by Pistrucci, 32 (Spink); and a very rare Persian military medal in gold, A.D. 1846, with four lines of Persian inscription, £13 (Spink).-Times, December 6. Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, of Leicester Square, had at their rooms, on Tuesday, a sale of violins, the property of Mr. A. J. Hipkins, F.S.A., and others, the main attraction being that each violin that was offered was guaranteed according to the description given in the catalogue. The prices throughout ruled high: A Cremona violin, £97; an Italian violin, labelled Andreas Guarnerius, £45; violoncello by Fendt, 22; violin by Guadagnini, £35; an Italian violin (Venetian school), £35; violoncello by Joseph Rocca, of Turin, 1830, £32; violin by Carlo Tononi, £40; another by Joannes Baptista Guadagnini, of Parma, 1762, 120; another by Pietro Guarnerius (Cremonensis fecit Mantuæ, sub titulo S. Theresia, anno 1701), £80; an Italian violin by Gabrielli, 28; another by V. Panormo, Palermo, 1765, £20; an Italian violoncello (late the property of Signor Piatti), 40; a violin by Cappa, £80, and another by Cappa, 105; another by F. B. Vuillaume (maggini copy), 27 10s. ; another by Giovanni Battista Gabrielli, Florence, 1766, £37; violin by Joseph Gagliano, £39 10s. ; German violin (Tourte School), £20; and a violoncello by Georges Chanot, Paris, VOL. XXXIV. 1843 (Guarnerius model), £23 10s. The day's sale, which contained only one hundred lots, realized £1,928 12s. 6d.-Times, December 9. PUBLICATIONS OF ARCHÆOLOGICAL We have received Part I. of the third volume of the 66 The Saga-Book of the Viking Club, vol. i., part 3, has reached us. Besides records of the business of the club, it contains the following papers, which are well illustrated: 1. "The Norsemen in Shetland," by Mr. Gilbert Goudie, whose special study of this subject is well known. At the end of the paper is a list of deeds in Norse relating to Shetland, many of them being communications by Mr. Goudie himself to the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 2. "A Boat Journey to Inari" (a large lake in Finland), by Mr. A. H. Cocks. 3. Saga Illustrations of Early Manks Monuments," by Mr. P. C. Kermode. All these papers are excellent, and are admirably illustrated. At the end is a short paper (not illustrated) by Dr. Hildebrand, on the "Monuments of the Island of Oeland." The Viking Club is doing useful work. 66 The tenth volume of Transactions of the Aberdeen Ecclesiological Society has just been published. It contains inter alia "The Aberdeen Non-Jurors," by James Turreff; "Notes on the Columbite and Cistercian Monasteries, and the Parish Church of Deer in Aberdeenshire," by Rev. Dr. Cooper; and "The Parish Church of St. Monans," by the Rev. J. Turn E bull. The plates (of which there are ten in this volume) are well-executed photo-lithographs, and add much to the permanent value of the Transactions. The membership of the Aberdeen Ecclesiological Society now stands at 362, and among the hon. vicepresidents we notice the names of the Marquis of Bute and the Bishop of St. Andrews. PROCEEDINGS OF ARCHEOLOGICAL At the meeting of the SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES, on bearing the York hall-marks for 1657, and that of the maker, John Plummer; (2) a bronze seal of Richard Blauwir, of the fifteenth century; and (3) a flint knife or sickle from Roydon, Norfolk.-Sir J. C. Robinson exhibited a carving-knife of the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century, with a silvergilt haft decorated with enamels and slabs of carnelian. The decorations include the Beaufort portcullis, a Tudor rose within the Garter, and SS and roses alternately round the edge. These devices point to the knife having formed one of a set belonging to an officer of the Royal household.-Chancellor Ferguson exhibited a silver Elizabethan communion cup and cover belonging to Cartmel Fell Chapel, with the unusual decoration of a band of popinjays round the bowl. Mr. W. Page, as local Secretary for Hertfordshire, made a report upon some recent excavations at St. Albans. He stated that while the north side of the churchyard of St. Albans Abbey was lately being turfed he was able to disclose sufficient of the foundations of the parochial chapel of St. Andrew, which adjoined the north-west wall of the Abbey church, to enable him to make a ground-plan of it. In working out this plan it appeared to him that the Norman church erected by Abbot Paul de Caen did not extend, as has hitherto been supposed, to the present west front, and this theory was corroborated by some excavations on the south side of the church, which showed a thickening of the foundation of the wall for a length of 2 feet 6 inches from about the middle of the third to the middle of the fourth bay from the west end. These foundations consisted of flint rubble with Norman mortar, which shows a marked difference in colour and composition from that of the Early English and later work, and which seems to appear nowhere westward of this point. The conclusion at which he arrived was that these foundations were those of the west front of the Norman church, which prob. ably resembled Norwich, and that Abbots John de Cella and William de Trumpington extended the church three bays westward at the close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century. Mr. Page also referred to the recent discovery in St. Michael's churchyard, which is within the site of Verulamium, of five drums of a Roman column, the largest of which is 2 feet 2 inches in diameter, and of a Roman wall which ran diagonally under the church.-In connection with Mr. Page's report the following resolution was unanimously adopted: "The Society of Antiquaries of London desires to express its appreciation of the action taken by the Earl of Verulam and Mr. Andrew McIlwraith, of Campbellfield, St. Albans, in protecting a portion of the Roman wall of Verulamium." At the meeting of the NUMISMATIC SOCIETY, on November 18, the President (Sir J. Evans) exhibited a selection of eleven Roman imperial gold coins (in a magnificent state of preservation) of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Faustina I. and II., recently acquired by him from a hoard lately found in Egypt. -The Rev. G. F. Crowther exhibited, on behalf of Mr. W. Maish, a Durham penny of Edward III., on which the name of Ireland is omitted from the inscrip tion on the obverse; the coin is also peculiar in having the crozier to the left, and two pellets on the right and one on the left of the crown; rev. legend, DUNOLM. Mr. Crowther also exhibited a York farthing of the same king, reading EDWARDVS rex, and examples of the Diamond Jubilee medals in silver and bronze of the larger size, and in silver of the smaller size. Mr. F. Spicer exhibited a half-groat of David II. of Scotland, struck at Edinburgh, differing from all the specimens described by Burns in having six arcs around the bust and a star on the sceptrehandle. It is believed to belong to the last issue of coins by David II.-Mr. L. A. Lawrence exhibited some interesting varieties of the coins of William the Conqueror.-Mr. R. A. Hoblyn exhibited a circular disc of cast bronze, apparently the lid of a box, on which were impressions from the dies (probably executed by Croker) of two trial farthings of Queen Anne, dated 1713, with the mottoes ANGLIÆ PALLADIVM and LARGITOR PACIS.-Dr. B. V. Head gave an account (contributed by Mr. G. F. Hill) of an interesting discovery of Roman and ancient British coins and bronze objects at Honley, near Hudders. field, in 1894. The Roman coins were denarii and bronze, ranging from circa B.C. 209 to A.D. 73. The British coins consisted of five new and unpublished small silver pieces of the time of Venutius, King of the Brigantes, and of his faithless Queen Cartimandua, who conspired against him circa A.D. 69, and, in conjunction with her husband's armour-bearer, Vellocatus, succeeded for a short time in depriving him of his kingdom (Tacitus, Hist., iii. 45). One of these remarkable coins, exhibited by Dr. Head, was struck in the Queen's name, the first syllable of which, Cart, is clearly legible upon it.--Dr. Head next read a paper contributed by Canon Greenwell on rare Greek coins recently added to his collection. The annual meeting of the SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND was held on November 30, Mr. J. Balfour Paul, Lyon King-of-Arms, in the chair. The following were elected officers for the ensuing year President, the Marquis of Lothian; vice-presidents, J. Balfour Paul (Lyon King-of-Arms), MajorGeneral Sir R. Murdoch Smith, and the Hon. John Abercromby; secretaries, David Christison, M.D., and Robert Munro, M.D.; foreign secretaries, Sir Arthur Mitchell, K. C. B., M.D., LL. D., and Thomas Graves Law; treasurer, J. H. Cunningham; curators, Robert Carfrae and Professor Duns, D.D.; curator of coins, Adam B. Richardson; librarian, James Curle; councillors, Sir George Reid, P.R.S.A., and John Ritchie Findlay (representing the Board of Trustees), Charles J. Guthrie, Thomas Ross, Gilbert Goudie, Reginald Macleod, C. B., Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P., John Horne Stevenson, and Alexander J. S. Brook. From the annual report it appeared that the museum had been visited by 22,310 persons during the year, and that the number of objects of antiquity added to the collection had been 135 by donation and 370 by purchase, while 77 volumes of books have been added to the library by donation and 102 by purchase, and the binding of 150 volumes has been proceeded with. Among the more important donations to the museum is the series of articles discovered during the excavation of the Roman camp at Ardoch undertaken by the society last summer, which have been presented by Colonel Home Drummond, of Blair Drummond, the proprietor. The seventh annual meeting of the HENRY BRADSHAW SOCIETY was held on November 17, at Burlington House, in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries. The Bishop of Bristol presided. The report showed that the membership of the society is well maintained, and its financial condition continues to be satisfactory. Good progress has been made during the past year in the work of editing. The third volume of the Westminster Missal, edited by Dr. Wickham Legg, concluding the edition of that book, has recently been issued to members. It contains, besides text and introduction, notes of an elaborate kind, which, with the indexes, will form a useful guide to the contents of the other English Mass Books, in many cases unprinted, which have been collected by the editor. The two volumes of the Irish Liber Hymnorum, forming the issue for 1897, may be expected to appear at an early date. Among other works in preparation are the Rosslyn Missal, the Hereford Breviary, and the Coronation Book of Charles V. of France. A special feature of the last-mentioned edition will be the reproduction of the fine miniatures representing the various acts of the Coronation with which the manuscript is adorned. A meeting of the ST. PAUL'S ECCLESIOLOGICAL SOCIETY was held at the Chapter House, St. Paul's, on November 24. Two papers by Mr. Cuthbert Atchley were read: the first was on the variations from the rule in the material of the coverings of the altar. The paper began by saying that in the Middle Ages it was ordered that the altar should have a coloured front of silk, or the like, in front of it, while the slab was to be covered with three linen cloths. The modern little books on ceremonial, however, speak of a "cerecloth," of waxed coarse linen, as the first covering of the altar. Evidence of this was hard to find in the inventories. Canvas and hair-cloth were much more in use. Of hair-cloth the author had collected twenty-three instances from inventories, and it was spoken of by Becon in his Catechism, so that it must have been common. The corporas was ordered to be of linen, without starch or other stiffening; yet at Sion the sisters used starch, but it was made from herbs. Silk was irregularly used for the corporas, and the author was inclined to think that the silken corporas may have been the forerunner of the silken chalice-veil of the Roman use. In any case, the use of silk instead of pure linen was a falling away from old customs and the traditions of centuries, and a development on bad principles. A discussion was begun by Mr. Maidlow Davis, who mentioned that in some modern books the "cere cloth" was said to have been introduced in order to prevent damp; and Dr. Wickham Legg mentioned that Mr. St. John Hope had thrown out the idea that the "hair cloth" of the inventories was to prevent the wet of the stone slab of the altar coming through to the linen. The second of Mr. Atchley's papers was on the growth of the custom of saying the first fourteen verses of St. John's Gospel at the end of Mass, In principio, as it is called from the opening words. Mr. Atchley's researches went far to show that the practice began in the superstition of the laity and the |