On finding that I was to share in the tribute which we are bringing to Sir George Macdonald, I vowed, as do those who mean to give of their best, the first thing that should meet me on my way home. Such vows have a way of turning out badly—or, at least, awkwardly— for the vowers, and this has been no exception to the general rule. The first subject that met me on my next appearance at the British Museum was the question of Roman coins found in Britain, and I felt, as Jephthah might have done if, instead of his daughter, his pet mongrel had come out to meet him: was the offering good enough ?

A good deal of attention has recently been paid to the Romano-British House of the type known as ‘basilican’ or ‘basilical,’ the long barn-like building with a fairly broad central nave and a pair of side-aisles, often bratticed off so as to form separate rooms, which sometimes extend right across the body of the hall. So far as we know the distribution of this type in bulk is restricted to the south of England. But it does occur so far north as Mansfield Woodhouse, in Nottinghamshire. On the Continent it is rare: but the examples are widely distributed, in such a way as to suggest that all is not yet known about the way in which these houses spread. Most of these houses, however, are situated in Britain, and here they are sometimes alone, but quite often associated with the smaller type of Roman villa, serving as outbuildings or servants' quarters.

No ruins of the ancient world outside Italy are more famous than the beautiful romantic remains of Queen Zenobia's city—the desert-city of caravans. No city of the Near East has yielded such an abundance of inscriptions, sculptures and fragments of painting. For more than a century and a half collectors and dealers have found in Palmyra a happy hunting ground; almost every museum has its Palmyrene bust or Palmyrene inscription or some small object such as the common clay tessera. A considerable number of the antiquities found at Palmyra have been published—most of the inscriptions in the Palmyrene dialect of Aramaic or in Greek, numerous sculptures, and many paintings found in tombs. The most important Palmyrene texts have been translated and will shortly be available to those historians who are not acquainted with Semitic languages.

No systematic survey of the methods adopted by military and civil builders in Roman Britain has yet been attempted. Nor does the present brief paper profess to fill the gap. It is merely a collection of notes based mostly upon a personal experience of varied types of Romano-British structure observed during excavation. As such, it may have a contributory value when a more comprehensive review of the subject is undertaken.

The best single collection of Roman building-material from Britain is that recovered from the factory of the 20th Legion at Holt, near Chester, and now exhibited in the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff. For the rest, building-materials and methods receive less than their due in our museums.