At the date of about 1000 B.c., that is to say a little after the A beginning of the Iron Age and two centuries before any effective colonization by the Etruscans coming from Asia Minor, northern and central Italy may be partitioned into five distinct spheres of civilization. For convenience of treatment I shall assume that each of these spheres represents a comparatively homogeneous people, passing over the question whether there may not have been submerged minorities of some local importance. And I shall give each of these five peoples, or nations as they may not unfairly be called, a conventional name of geographic derivation, to avoid the endless and futile controversies as to tribal nomenclature. As the accompanying map therefore will show the north-west is occupied by the Comacines, part of Venetia by the Atestines, the Bolognese region by the northern Villanovans, Tuscany and part of Latium by the southern Villanovans. East of the Apennines, from Rimini to Aufidena, the Adriatic coast and the central Apennines were held by the Picenes, who must be understood for this purpose to include some of the tribes known to history as Samnites in addition to a small number of Umbrians. The first four of these nations were related by more or less close ties of kinship and practised the same burial rite of cremation, but the Picenes were of wholly different origin and used only the rite of inhumation. Of the Ligurians, occasionally mentioned by classical writers as occupying the coast of the Italian Riviera, it is impossible to say anything as they have left no remains by which their civilization in the Iron Age can be judged.

The visitor to Tours, having exhausted himself, as is soon and easily possible, in ‘doing’ the chateaux of the Loire, may find refreshment for his jaded brain by passing from history to prehistory, and turning back the pages from 1500 A.D. to 2000 B.C. or thereabouts, which he may do in the course of two short journeys from his hotel.

There are many prehistoric remains in the departement d'Indre et Loire, and in the arrondissement of Tours alone there are g dolmens. The first of the two described in this paper is situated 10 kilometres from Tours by road. The other, though not in the same departement is within easy rail distance from Tours, and adjoins the town of Saumur.

The theory that American aboriginal civilization was derived from south-east Asia and indirectly from Egypt has received such wide publicity that it is no longer possible to dismiss it lvithout refutation and wait for it to die a natural death. Such was the policy followed when the extravagances of Lord Kingsborough claiming that the inhabitants of Central America were the lost ten tribes first saw the light. Le Plongeon's fantastic claims too had their hour and then passed into the limbo of lost causes. Other heads of this hydra, peopling Central America from the lost continent of Atlantis, from Babylonia, Africa, New Zealand, Easter Island, and in fact from nearly every quarter of the globe, were not lopped off but left to wither away from lack of that blood, so necessary to this type of hydra–reasoned argument and proof.

North of the village of Grassington, near Skipton in west Yorkshire, is a large field known as High Close Pasture, largely occupied by old cultivation areas separated from one another by lynchets and low, wide banks. The area so occupied runs 1200 feet in a northerly direction, and is roughly 300 feet wide. Formerly it extended considerably to the west, as remains of apparently the same series of lynchets are to be seen covering Kimbergill Hill and extending to the southern slopes of Lea Green. On High Close Pasture the lynchets and banks are well preserved ; they enclose rectangular fields among which, though varying in size and shape, the form of a short, broad strip seems to predominate. It is extremely difficult to deduce the dimensions of a customary acre from the actual fields on the ground? but in this case the strips average from 360 to 400 feet in length, and round about 75 feet in breadth–dimensions which suggest a I × 5 acre with an area of about 0.65 acre.

That do we inherit from our Roman conquerors ? To this question some reply, ‘Little or nothing’, and some, ‘The seeds of culture and religion’. The point has been debated endlessly, because it is an important one, with Apractical bearings. It is difficult to reach a decision because the decisive period, between 400 and 600 A.D., is one of the darkest in our history. Was there a ‘break with Rome’ more or less abrupt and complete, or did the traditions of Roman culture survive? By a strange irony, the protagonist of the complete hiatus was the late Professor Haverfield, whose life's work—Roman Britain—still lives in our midst; whereas the writer of today who is most vociferous in support of continuity is Mr Hilaire Belloc; and Mr Belloc is associated in the minds of us a11 rather with the Dark Ages and their tumultuous wars than with the Pax Romana.

The Swedish archaeological expedition in Cyprus worked last year at Lapithos on the north and at Karavostassi, the ancient Soli, on the north-west.

At Lapithos 23 tombs from the early and middle Copper Age and zo tombs from the early Iron Age were opened and examined. The former cover a period from the end of early Cypriote I to the beginning of middle Cypriote 11. The main part of the finds consists of a very representative series of pottery : red polished I-IV ware, black polished ware, black slip 1-11 ware, white painted I-IV ware. The later tombs have yielded a rich collection of tools and weapons, bracelets and rings of copper, finger-rings of silver and gold, 8 necklaces of paste beads, idols of terra cotta and one marble idol, etc. The gold rings (early Cypriote III) represent the first gold found in Cvprus of the early Copper Age. One necklace (early Cypriote III), coniists of 156 globular beads of various sizes arranged in 8 rhythmic series, with one large bead in the middle of each series. Another necklace (middle Cypriote I) consists of 64 large globular beads and more than 500 small cylindrical beads inserted between the large ones. A third is of round, fluted and double-conical beads in symmetrical arrangement. The idols are of the plank-shaped type. One represents a mother holding a baby in her arms, another a mother and a baby in a bed, and a third a man and a woman in a bed.

Ever since the year 1921 the Palestine Expedition of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania has been engaged in the excavation of the ancient city of Beth-Shan, at present called Beisan, which lies in North Palestine at the eastern end of the Valley of Jezreel. The site consists of an enonnous mound, named Tell el-Hosn, or ‘Mound of the Fortress’, and an extensive cemetery—one of the largest in Palestine, which has been proved to contain burials of all periods, from the early Bronze Age to the Byzantine era. In the tell itself have so far been found the remains of nine superimposed citadels or city-levels :—I, Arabic (mosque), Crusader, etc., 636 A.D.-19th century A.D.; II, Byzantine (circular church), 330 A.D.-636 A.D. ; III, Hellenistic (temple), Jewish and Roman, 301 B.C.-329 A.D.; IV, Late Ramesside, Philistine, Israelite, Assyrian, Scythian, New Babylonian, Old Persian, etc., 1224 B.C.-302 B.C.; V, Rameses 11 (two Canaanite temples,-northern one, ' House of Ashtaroth ' of I Samuel, xxxi, 10, and southern one ‘Temple of Dagon’ of I Chronicles, x, 10), 1292 B.c.-1225 B.C.; VI, Seti I,—two levels, late Seti, early Seti (Canaanite temple), 1313 B.C.-1292 B.C. ; VII, Amenophis III, etc. (Canaanite Temple), 141 I B.c.-13 14 B.C. ; VIII, pre-Amenophis III, 1446 B.c.-1412 B.C.; and IX, Thothmes III (two Canaanite temples,-southern one for ‘Mekal, the god of Beth-Shan’, and northern one for his female counterpart), 1501 B.C.-1447 B.C. It will thus be seen that there have been discovered altogether nine sacred buildings on the tell, that is to say, an Arabic mosque, a Byzantine circular church, a Hellenistic temple, and six Canaanite temples. All the Canaanite temples have been unearthed since the year 1925, the two temples of Thothmes III being excavated in the 1927 season.

The main centre of literary activity was transferred from Athens to Alexandria about 250 B.c., and this city, which had been founded by Alexander in 332 B.C., under Ptolemy Philadelphus became a great book mart.

As far as the history of libraries is concerned, the Alexandrian library was comparatively late. The East had known libraries thousands of years earlier. The Greeks themselves had founded their first state library about one hundred years earlier ; this was established by the Greek government at Heracleia, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, some time before 350 B.C., in the days when the great Alexander was a little boy.