The survival of types is a recognised feature in the philosophy of geology. Long after their contemporaries have disappeared we find stray shells outliving catastrophe and change, and recalling the features of times which have passed away. Similarly we encounter in our historical inquiries, even if we choose for our guides the most patient and scrupulous of writers, errors that have survived a crushing exposure of many years' date. They linger about the sentences of fastidiously critical historians, the relics of an uncritical age, to the great delight of some simple-minded scholars, who for the first time in their lives discover the fallibility of their master.

The sword which Lord Wharncliffe has been good enough to exhibit to the Society was found on the moors of Catterdale, at the head of Wensleydale, Yorkshire, on the borders of Westmoreland, but I am not aware whether any circumstances connected with its discovery have been recorded beyond that it lay about one foot under ground.

It is proposed in the following memoir to do two things : one, to give some account of that species of mosaic decoration which by the Romans was distinguished as “opus sectile,” particularly as applied on walls; the other, to describe the very remarkable building which has afforded by far the most important examples of work of that character of which we have any knowledge, viz., the church of San Andrea in Catabarbara, which was probably originally the great hall or basilica of the palace of the Bassi on the Esquiline hill in Rome.

I beg to exhibit three beads belonging to a class which has excited considerable interest among archaeologists both in this country and in America, and of which the origin appears to be somewhat uncertain.

The tomb of Richard II. has a triple interest: for Westminster Abbey; for English History generally; and for the Society of Antiquaries.

(1.) For the Abbey, Richard II. must remain, in spite of all his faults, one of its most familiar and consecrated personages. His coronation is described in the only volume handed down from mediæval times to the custody of the successive Deans of Westminster: namely, the Liber Regalis of Abbot Littlington, of which a reprint has lately been made for the Roxburghe Society by the munificence of Lord Beauchamp. The event was further marked by the first appearance of two features in the coronations, both especially connected with Westminster, the Champion, and the Knights of the Bath.

Traditionally the erection of the Keep of Dover Castle is ascribed to Bishop Gundulf, the brother-in-law of William the Conqueror; but, while the absence of ornaments and the severe simplicity of the interior mark its early character, the style of the exterior, in which the flat pilaster, so typical of the early Norman castle, has developed into the protruding square turret, seems to denote a later date.

In 1868 Colonel A. Lane Fox, F.S.A. contributed a paper to this Society, on the Sussex Hill Forts, and on the principles of castrametation which a most careful examination of the whole series led him to conclude had been adopted by the tribes who had constructed them.

In the course of his inquiry, and in the description of the seventeen earthworks that line our Sussex downs, he mentioned the occurrence, in several places, of various pits in and about the camps. The instances are at Wolstanbury, Highdown Hill, Mount Caburn, and Cissbury—most notably the latter.

This paper was shortly followed by another, giving a detailed account of the extensive excavations carried on by him at Highdown and at Cissbury. In this communication he dwells at length on the pits situate within the latter camp, their character and contents; the flint implements especially are elaborately classified and fully described by him. The examination of about thirty pits resulted in the following information,—to which I may be permitted briefly to refer in order to be intelligible. That they were from 20 to 70 feet wide, and of a depth of from 5 to 7 feet below the surface. That they contained a great quantity of flint implements, a few bones, dead land-shells, charcoal and fragments of coarse pottery distributed in layers of red clay and chalk rubble, the pottery being only found immediately beneath the turf.

In considering the object and use of these pits, Colonel Lane Eox states that he believes them to have been for the purpose of obtaining flint for manufacturing implements, and subsequently to have been used for habitations.

I hope to add confirmatory evidence of both of these theories.

The Home Office of Imperial Home, as working through the milites stationarii and leaving their indelible mark on our country, was exhibited by Mr. H. C. Coote, in a paper read before us on December 5th, 1872. The novelty of the subject, whilst adding to its interest, rendered it difficult of worthy discussion at the hearing. I have now the permission—nay, the encouragement—of the author to offer some further illustrations of it.

The district with which these researches are connected lies in North Tynedale, in Western Northumberland. Until recently, when the North British Railway opened the Waverley route into Scotland, it formed an isolated portion of a remote valley, being shut in by the rivers North Tyne and Rede. Situated a few miles to the north of that remarkable monument of the Roman power, the Barrier Wall of Hadrian, and directly connected with it by the old Roman road, the Watling Street, on its eastern side, the district around the ancient village of Birtley, formerly Birkley, was still more secluded by the rivers bounding it on the north and west sides. This isolation, however, together with the fact that these wind-swept uplands, rising in places to about 1,000 feet above the sea, have never been under the plough, except for a short time in the beginning of the present century, has tended to preserve many vestiges of very ancient occupation. Primitive entrenchments or camps abound wherever such simple castrametation was possible, thrown up on the summit of the rounded hills, on the bare escarpments, or on the level plateaux beneath these higher positions, that characterise the lower series of the carboniferous formation. Even the great “crags,” the occasional protruded faults of columnar basalt, were made available as “coigns of vantage” by the early inhabitants.

Ten years have passed away since the Duc de Blacas, at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of France, discussed the question of the celebrated Alban Necropolis, discovered in 1817, by Giuseppe Carnevali, beneath an undisturbed mass of peperino, while nearly the same space of time has elapsed since the revival among ourselves of the question of the discovery of vessels anterior to the last volcanic eruption round about the crater of the Alban lake.

The sad story of the demolition of the Chapter-house at Durham has been so often told that it need not be repeated here. The eastern portion of that fine Norman building having been levelled to the ground at the end of the last century, its site came to form a portion of the Deanery garden, formerly the centry-garth or cemetery of the Abbey. In the summer of 1874, while a party of friends staying at the Deanery were surveying the spot, some curiosity was expressed as to whether the floor remained buried under the soil, and whether any part of the stone chair, the sedes episcopalis, in which the bishops were placed at their enthronement, was still in existence. An iron rod forced into the ground in several places was found to be stopped by something hard, at a greater depth westward than eastward, the difference being caused by the steps of the apse. A small excavation a little to the east of the present east wall revealed the inscribed slab of Ralph Flambard, and another on the site of the chair brought to light the lower courses of the semicircular eastern wall; no trace however of the chair itself could be found. It was now determined by the Dean that the removal of the earth should be proceeded with until at least all the central portion of the floor should be exposed, in order that the grave-covers indicated in Browne Willis's plan, of which one had been already found, might again be seen.

The first discovery in the cemetery at Frilford, subsequent to those already recorded in the Archæologia, XLII. p. 417–485, was made on March 22, 1869, when a leaden coffin was found, containing the bones of a young woman, with a toilet comb at the right of the back of her head. This brings the number of leaden coffins found at Frilford up to five; one of them has already been figured in Archæologia, XLII. pl. xxiv. figures 7 and 8.

A short time ago Mr. Hutchinson, the tenant of Moorhouse Farm, the property of the Right Hon. Lord Brougham and Vaux, informed one of the authors of this communication, Mr. Stalker, that he had recently laid bare a cist containing human bones, and desired him to examine the circumstances of the occurrence and the nature of the contents.

It is hardly necessary to describe the situation of the town of Ravenna. Its ancient fortress occupied a strong position, resting on the sea towards the east and south, and, with an ample harbour for those days, it could not be blockaded by any army not possessing also a fleet. Lying out of the beaten track, and thus defended by the sea, Ravenna, at a time when Western Europe was convulsed with the commotions dependent upon the extinction of the Western Empire, was contentedly secure under the protection of the yet powerful empire of Constantinople.

The charters and other documents which Mr. Blunt has kindly exhibited this evening formed a part of the archives of the Cistercian Abbey of Robertsbridge, founded in 1176, at a spot within the parish of Salehurst, in Eastern Sussex, where the high road from Hastings to Tunbridge crosses the River Rother, which here changes its course from south-east to east, and after passing Bodiham Castle forms for a few miles the boundary between Kent and Sussex, until turning sharply to the south it enters the sea at Rye Harbour.

As you seem to have been interested in the Roman iron tools found by me at Holcombe, I think perhaps that some further particulars regarding the find, and the remains of the Roman Villa which has been discovered there, may not be uninteresting to you.

I have the honour to bring to your notice some remarkable antiquities which have been discovered in the village of Desborough, Northamptonshire, in February last, while digging iron ore on the property of Mr. and Mrs. Wise, of Woodcote, Warwickshire.