The authenticity of the prehistoric paintings of the caves of Altamira has now been fully recognized for about thirty years, and with the many similar discoveries which have been made in France and Spain an entirely new light has been thrown on the mentality of prehistoric men. We must henceforth acknowledge that they possessed artistic tastes and a well developed aesthetic sense. No longer may we think of them as savages, solely concerned with the most material needs of daily life, but rather as men endowed with well-developed intellect and capable of considering things over and above the mere material side of the struggle for existence.

The discovery of skeletons, obviously buried with care, and surrounded with tools and ornaments, had already proved to us that respect was paid to the dead, and that there was a belief in an after-life. But with the discovery of works of art a fresh avenue of knowledge was opened up before us.

Whether Brentford was at one time Brigantford, or the ford of the Brigantes, is a question which the modern etymologist would not hesitate to scorn; nor is the identity of the site with the ford whereat conquering Caesar crossed the river on a celebrated occasion as substantial as the granite monument which now commemorates the event at the head of the ferry-stairs. Nor yet again is the name ‘Old England’, which the Ordnance Survey ascribes to the water-meadow on the Middlesex shore some 400 yards above the present junction of Thames and Brent, of authenticated antiquity. Nevertheless here and hereabouts, as our museums can show, was a great losing of swords and spears in prehistoric times, and here too, as we now know, were riverside dwellers at the end of the Bronze Age and, again, in Roman and later times. The name ‘Old England’ may stand.

The origin of every nation lies beyond the range of written records. It is one of the principal tasks of prehistory to supplement and extend backwards the historical tradition until it brings those events within its purview. The difficulty of the task is greatest where the historical record is shortest. So the peoples of northern and eastern Europe who most deeply concern us Northerners present one of the most perplexing problems to the archaeologist.

In the case of the Teutons the problem has been materially clarified by Scandinavian investigators. Moreover Gustav Kossinna in Germany has devised for its solution a method all his own which the Vienna school has subsequently applied to the Illyrian question. But in western Europe the Teutonic invasions for the most part fall within the domain of history. The forerunners of the Teutons in England, France, western Germany and in parts of Spain and Italy were the Kelts. The latter in places maintained their identity side by side with the Teutons, and in any case constitute a vital element in the present population of the regions in question. No wonder then that archaeology turned early to the elucidation of the problem of Keltic origins.

Recent discoveries in the Valley of Le Roc (Charente, France) have thrown entirely new light upon the art of the Solutrean period. Though gems of flint workmanship, like the laurel-leaf blades and single-sided shoulder-points occur, engravings and sculptures were formerly considered rare.

Before the Le Roc discoveries, the known Solutrean engravings were confined to an antelope head found at La Cave (Lot) by M. A. VirC, a horse identified at Solutrb by Dr F. Arcelin and the AbbC Breuil, a mammoth from Bavaria and another from Ardkche (France). To these should be added the sculptures of the Fourneau du Diable (Dordogne), found by M. Peyrony. These last were on blocks which rested on a typical hearth-level and their age seems quite certain. Their style, compared with that of Le Roc, is relatively primitive.

Probably not one in ten thousand of those who pass through the middle of Durrington Walls is aware of its existence. Though plainly visible when once pointed out, the earthen ramparts have been so greatly altered by ploughing as to be hardly recognizable, and the reconstruction of their orginal form is a very pretty exercise in field-archaeology

The walls consists of a round enclosure, cut into two unequal parts by the road from Amesbury to Netheravon (Wilts), about a mile and a half north of Amesbury, on the west bank of the Avon. Woodhenge is only eighty yards to the south, close to and on the west side of the same road. The earthwork differs fundamentally from the ordinary defensive ‘camp’, for it encloses, not a hill-top but a coombe or hollow, and it has its ditch inside, not outside, the rampart. In this latter respect it resembles the circles at Avebury and Marden in Wilts, Knowlton in Dorset, Thornborough in Yorkshire, and Arbour Low in Derbyshire; though there are points of difference. In size, Durrington Walls compares closely with Avebury, whose great earthen circle is slightly smaller in diameter; rom east to west the internal area of the Walls is 1300feet across, and from north to south about 1160 feet. (The average diameter at Avebury is 1130 feet). Both too are within easy reach of a stream, the Avon being IOO yards from the eastern entrance of the Walls, and the Kennet 330 yards from the nearest point of the great circle at Avebury. The enclosure at Marden actually touches the banks of the Avon at a point higher up in its course.

Nicaea is now known to us only as a name, a somewhat illusionary place connected with synods, bishops and councils of the Church and, more usually, with the creed which takes its name from it. But in reality it is more than a name. Some fifty miles from Brusa, or a good day's journey from Constantinople with the aid of all the conveniences of modern travel, what remains of this city that was once so important stands on the borders of the lake of Isnic. To reach it several ranges of hills have to be crossed by the worst of roads, intended only for the old Turkish araba or high carriage but now gaily used by motors and lorries. But the country is delightful and the view from the various foot-hills which surround Mount Olympus is superb. These hills, together with those of a second range further to the north, hem in the lake and so afford a natural protection for the town on its eastern shore, the walls of which can just be distinguished from the hills as brown patches amongst the exuberant green of the coastal fringe.

The earliest Christian churches of England must have been built‘while the Romans yet dwelt in Britain’. It is quite possible that some remains of them exist, unrecognized by modern eyes, and offering in their arrangements none of the conventions which have since so greatly influenced the development of the church plan. But we have at Silchester the plan of a building which has been claimed as a Christian church, probably of 4th century date, and of it we may say that if it be actually so—a matter which is not capable of definite proof,— it falls well enough into line with later churches of whose nature there can be no doubt. It is a little building with a rectangular nave flanked by side chambers or aisles and preceded by a porch. The nave ends in an apse, in this instance to the west, with transeptal chambers to north and south.

John webb, in his preface to Inigo Jones's posthumously published Stonehenge, in 1655 says : ‘This discourse of Stonehenge is moulded off and cast into a rude Form, from some few indigested notes after the late judicious Architect, the Vitruvius of his Age, Inigo Jones’. Upon these notes, Webb undoubtedly dined not wisely but too well and I trust I shall not be accused of doing the same with Colonel Hawley's many and well digested notes. I have one advantage over Webb in that I have seen Stonehenge, and I very much doubt whether he had.

In describing the stones, I shall begin at the centre and work outwards, taking as centre the point where a line drawn from stone 91 just inside the bank to stone 93, and a line from hole 92 in the middle of the supposed barrow to hole 94 in a similar barrow in the NW quadrant, cut each other and the axis of Stonehenge. It is from this point as centre that all the black circles on the plan are drawn. The axis is a line through the centre, which divides the stones and earthworks into two equal parts.