Out of Africa there is always something new, as Aristotle wrote in the fourth century B.C., and although the Libyan Desert is one of the most desolate areas of the world’s surface, recent explorations have shown that there are many archaeological discoveries to be made which will throw considerable light on the early history of peoples and their migrations in North Africa.

In the eastern Sahara and in the Libyan Desert, there are still many unexplored tracts, and even, it is probable, several unvisited oases, particularly in the great white spaces on the map which stretch southwest and southeast of the Kufara oasis-group.

In this wonderful century when discoveries and inventions have followed fast on one another’s heels Man seems to look dazed and half comprehendingly at the works of his own hands. So that there are some who say that he is on the brink of new andmore wonderful mastery over Nature ; others that there are no more discoveries to make ; and others again who wish to cry halt, and ask, hopelessly, for ten years’rest from the innovations and disturbances which scientific inquiry is bringing into their world.

In the American journal Science for 1920 mention was made of my plan for investigating certain laminated clays in North America. During a previous visit to that country in 1891 I had noticed, in several places, laminated clays, similar to late glacial melting sediments in Sweden ; these I had found, by long continued investigations, to represent the annual deposit from the melting water along the border of the retreating ice-edge. (Plate I). With the aid of a graphic method for the comparison of the sharply marked annual layers or varves, I had succeeded in identifying such varves from one point to another, and ultimately worked out a systematic plan for the elaboration of a continuous time-scale. (See page 309). This was mainly carried out in 1905-6 on the basis of field measurements made with the assistance of a number of able young geologists. During the following year this standard scale was completed at many points. I thus succeeded in tracing, step by step, the recession of the ice-edge and the immediately following progress of the clay varves over one region after the other, until the whole line from the south to the centre of Sweden had been traced.

The archaeological interest of place-names has been dealt with by Mr Crawford in his article ‘ Place-names and Archaeology ’ published by the English Place-name S0ciety.l In that article numerous words associated with prehistoric or ancient remains are grouped together and their meanings discussed in detail, but up to the present time very few attempts have been made to deal with words of a similar kind in Cornwall.

In the course of several years’ study of the place-names of Cornwall I have amassed a considerable amount of evidence which may help to throw light on the dark period of Cornish history prior to the English conquest. As some years may elapse before the results of this survey are published, a brief discussion of some of the more interesting names in the county and in particular those names which have an archaeological or historical significance, may be of interest, and at the same time indicate in what direction future work of this kind should lie.

The Scandinavian peoples emerge into the light of history much later than their neighbours in the South and the West, the Teutons on the Continent and in England. It was only through the Viking raids that the Nordic peoples came into touch with the rest of Europe, and were gradually converted to Christianity. Long after the introduction of the Christian faith they preserved many peculiar and archaic traits. Thus the Nordic peoples retained, with great tenacity and conservatism, their ancient judicial system. This system has therefore been the object of considerable interest even outside Scandinavia, although the manuscripts through which it has become known are much later than the corresponding documents of other Teutonic nations.

An investigation of the localities where justice was dispensed in former ages is of importance not only for the history of civilization, but also as a complement to the study of oral and written tradition, and thus to the history of law itself. In view of the many points of similarity between the judicial systems of the various Teutonic nations, some notes on the Thing-steads, or places of assembly, in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, may perhaps be of interest to English-speaking readers.

Italy has been and still is the scene of unprecedented archaeological activity ; and it was not unnatural that this fact should lead to the holding of a succession of congresses during the Spring. Rome, as was only fitting, opened the ball on the 2628th anniversary of her birthday, the 21st of April, with the first national congress of Roman Studies.

Very wisely the organizing committee decided, as also did the Etruscan committee two years before, to regard this as a sort of preliminary canter to an international congress to be held, I believe, in 1930, the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Vergil ; and therefore to confine it in the main to Italians—though various foreign scholars resident in Rome were invited to take part, and several of them read papers.