The ability to recognize the traces of ancient cultivation is essential to all students of earthworks and field-workers. The scope of our study is being widened, so that we are interested not merely in fortifications but in any kind of interference with the surface soil resulting from man’s activities in the past. It would be purely an arbitrary distinction to be interested in a hill-fort and not in the surface traces of an agricultural village of the same date, and these same surface traces consist very largely in lynchets, or cultivation terraces, the presence of which is often the sole clue to the site of the settlement.

It is a matter of observation that agricultural processes at different periods may leave quite distinct and separate kinds of traces on the ground. This depends on the kind of plough used, and on different habits with regard to the shape, size, and outlay of the fields. The one feature that is common to most ancient fields is the tendency to form terraces on sloping ground, due to the way in which the soil creeps downhill under the influence of ploughing and rain-wash, forming an accumulation along the lower edges of the plot.

Any traveller in South Italy who finds himself in that tract of bleak and desolate country which is intersected by the Bari-Brindisi railroad, will not fail to observe many odd-looking structures in the fields. At a distance they appear to be quaint little conical-shaped huts, some 8 or 9 feet in height, fashioned after the manner of round bee-hives, and composed of flat stones, loosely piled together. They are used, so the natives will explain, as shelters for the cattle, as barns, or as store-houses for the fishermen’s nets.

But further enquiry will elicit some stranger information about them—to the effect that these structures date from time immemorial, and that they are called ‘trulli’, although nobody seems to know the reason why, or what the term really means. The traveller will also be told that if he is enterprising enough to make the adventure into the remoter parts of Apulia, he may see a whole city of ‘trulli’, a city of some 12,000 souls, who live in what must surely be regarded as among the strangest human habitations on earth.

I do not intend in this paper to give a complete history of the dog, but simply to discuss certain problems connected with it, and in particular to describe a number of types belonging to different periods and countries.

Our evidence is for the most part pictorial; .yet it must be used with caution, for difficulties are bound to arise if anmals are represented alone, with no clue to their size. For example, figure 3 shows representations of dogs on coins from Panormus of the 4th century B.c.; artistically they are excellent, but nothing can be inferred as to breed, for this depends on the size, of which we know nothing. On the other hand, figure I, although artistically crude, not only tells us the size of the dog relative to the man beside him, but also that the animal is of Maltese breed (MEAITAIE). This is in fact the only instance in antiquity where a breed can be definitely ascertained, for even when descriptions are given of classical breeds, they are as a rule thoroughly unsatisfactory and establish no certain conclusion.

The discovery of America by the Norsemen in the early years of the eleventh century is now one of the accepted facts of history. While considerable difference of opinion still exists as to the measure of reliance to be placed, in points of detail, upon the documents in which the discovery is recorded, and the precise localities visited are still the subject of controversy, no one who has devoted any attention to the subject entertains any doubt that the broad fact of the discovery is established. But, though this is so, the evidence has hitherto been exclusively confined to the historical narratives of the sagas, and the attempts which have been made from time to time to supplement their testimony by the production of traces of Norse occupation discovered in America itself have not only broken down, but have excited so large a measure of ridicule and suspicion that they have, rather paradoxically, been the principal reason why general acceptance of the basic fact was unduly delayed. As a natural and justifiable result, the first reaction of students of the subject to alleged discoveries of Norse remains or inscriptions in the West is one of extremely cautious scepticism.

In my recently published book I have advanced a theory as to the Wanderings of the Israelites and the loss of the Egyptian Host, which if not entirely original contains a considerable amount of fresh evidence based on ten years’ experience of the Peninsula. Like all theories that tend to upset old beliefs this has resulted in a considerable amount of criticism and comment. The assumption briefly is that the Israelites never went to southern Sinai as has been firmly believed for the last 1900 years, but remained for the whole of the period of the Wanderings in the comparatively small cultivable area in the northeast corner of Sinai where they could grow corn for making bread and find grazing for their flocks. This part of my theory is by no means new as the same views have been expounded already by several students of the Wanderings, and I have merely corroborated their opinion and brought forward new evidence and arguments to prove the theory by virtue of my long residence in the Peninsula and knowledge of the country and climate. The explanation I have given of the loss of the Egyptian Host, however, is a novel one, and so far as I know has never been published previously though Sir William Willcocks assumes that the disaster occurred in a lake in northern Sinai and not in the Red Sea; but the lake he selects is not the Bardawil as I maintain, and the incidents that caused the flooding were totally different from those I have suggested.

In his detailed account of the chambered cairn of Bryn Celli Ddu, Mr W. J. Hemp describes a remarkable pattern stone, found on the site lying flat in a floor of purple clay, as it had been deliberately placed by the builders of the monument. Mr Hemp says that ‘The recumbent position of the stone… and the disposition of the pattern inevitably suggest that it was intended to be set upright in the ground at some stage in the funeral rites in such a way as to display the pattern’. He adds that the meaning of the pattern is unknown but that some form of magic is perhaps the most obvious explanation, and cites references for the occurrence of the style in megalithic monuments of Brittany and Ireland. The pattern is incided on the stone with a leaf-shaped outline. The lines are zigzag, and the design at once suggests an inaccurately rendered maze formation.