Mani, the Sacred Jewel (Shansi in Chinese; Shinshi in Japanese) is that one of the Sapta Rapta (Seven Treasures) which is the emblematic symbol of the Buddha and his doctrine. Defined as a supernatural pearl, spherical, self-luminous, and of unfading lustre, it sheds a brilliant light on all its surroundings and is therefore an appropriate simile for the Enlightenment which Buddhists seek. In the Iconography of the Far East this fabulous gem is an attribute of several persons in the Ruddhist hierarchy; the principal one being K'shitigarhba (Chin: Ti Sang, Jap: Jizo Bosatsu) who is the Bodhisattva of Compassionate Help in the same way that Avalokitesvara (Chin: Kwanyin, Jap: Kwannon) is the Bodhisattva of Mercy. The latter may at times be shown as a holder of the Jewel—see for an example, the well-known Yumadono Kwannon of Horiuji (1)—but more often her chosen attribute is a slender vase. One of the sixteen Arhats (Chin: Lohan, Jap: Rakan) is also represented holding the Sacred Jewel in his hand. This is Panthaka, the tenth on the list, whose constant companion is a Dragon—the divinely appointed guardian of the Gem. Sometimes a Dragon alone holds the Gem in his claw: sometimes the Gem appears in solitary splendour with two Dragons in the role of heraldic supporters on either side. The illusion that they are fighting for it (like the Lion and Unicorn) is due to the querulous expression Dragons habitually wear, and not necessarily to rivalry.

The excavation here briefly described was carried out at the end of the summer of 1945 and though not yet completed, the results already are of such interest as to make publication of this short report desirable. The work is being conducted by Michael J. O'Kelly, M.A., Curator of the Cork Public Museum, and is being financed by means of a special grant made by the Governing Body of University College, Cork.

The fort lies on the shoulder of a prominent knoll in the range of hills which divides the eastern part of Cork Harbour from a rich agricultural hinterland extending northward to include the valleys of the rivers Bride and Blackwater. Nearby modern towns of importance are Fermoy, 12 miles to the northwest, and Midleton, 9 miles to the south. The latter stands at the head of a narrow estuary which runs northward out of the eastern bight of Cork Harbour and probably marks the point at which seafarers-possibly arriving direct from the continent-disembarked to trade with the established settlers of the district, or to found bridge-heads for subsequent marauding incursions into the rich terrain of the interior. That the latter was a possibility forseen by the early agriculturalists of east Cork is shown by their careful selection of a strategic site. The builders, who were members of a peaceful farming community (as is shown by the presence of agricultural implements on the site), placed their outpost so that it dominated the main pass which gave access to their territory from the south and the sea-the direction from which they believed their enemies were most likely to come.

The great cultural unit of the Hallstatt (A–;B) Period in southern Germany and its neighbourhood is now considered to be the cradle of the Celts. The latest discussion of the problem is that by P. Bosch-Gimpera. A special variety of this culture seems to be represented in the country lying between the Alps and the Jura, extending from the lake of Constance to the lakes of Savoy. It is found in the lake-dwellings which came to an abrupt end somewhere about 700–650 B.C. The top layer in many of these is marked by evidence of burning, indicating a catastrophe that must have been wide-spread and general. This type of habitation, once so prevalent, was never revived; there are no signs of it in the following period (Hallstatt C–D). From the Late Bronze Age onwards there was a continuous development in the lake-dwellings, whose last stage is called in Switzerland the Latest Bronze Age (contemporary with the Rhenish Hallstatt B).

While engaged in locust investigations in Ethiopia between 1942 and 1945 I found ample opportunity to indulge my favourite hobby—the study of Christian architecture and antiquities. I knew, before coming to the country, that Ethiopia was little-explored and probably a fruitful field. I had heard of the pre-Christian monuments at Aksum, and of the extraordinary rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, both of which have been long (if not widely) known. But in the end the antiquities that came to light far surpassed my expectations, and I had the satisfaction of visiting many remarkable monuments, which have rarely been seen by Europeans, hidden away in the mountain fastnesses of the northern highlands. One or two Italian archaeologists had, it is true, begun to pay attention to some of these buildings, but I believe no connected account of the early Ethiopian style of architecture has yet been attempted, I propose in this summary article to confine myself mainly to the internal history of the monuments, only touching upon the more difficult question of the ultimate sources of the style.

It is said that truth is stranger than fiction. The history of the Middle Ages is largely one of romance; and of all the medieval episodes, the story of the crusades is perhaps the most romantic; and of all crusading ventures the most fantastic and least known is the amphibious attack on the holy cities of Islam, Mecca and El Medina, by the famous French crusader, the prince of Antioch and lord of Transjordan, Renaud de Chatillon. To us in the Sudan Renaud's raid down the Red Sea is particularly interesting, as the crusaders actually landed in the Sudan and dominated both the Sudanese and Arabian coasts of the Red Sea for many months.

In his Report on Excavations at Wroxeter, 1923–27, Professor Atkinson has discussed at some length (Appendix c, pp. 345–62) the origin of the type I of Forum-Basilica block which seems to have been generally adopted for the civic centres of Romano-British tribal capitals. He concludes that this plan (which he designates the principiatype) is of military origin, based on legionary principia, and was adopted ‘perhaps first in the Flavian period, under military influence, in provinces where this was strong and civil development weak and backward … for use as the administrative centre of the civil town’.

To the anthropologist, the dating of the fossil remains of prehistoric man in the Far East has always seemed a vague and haphazard business. So far as Europe is concerned, we have accepted the correlations between cultural sequences and stratigraphical data which have been worked out after many years of intensive work by geologists and archaeologists. Indeed, so well has the evidence been clarified for us that we even feel we can to some extent assess the validity of arguments put forward for the chronological position of this or that piece of human fossil. But the Far East is very different. The cultural sequences characteristic of Europe are not to be found there, the animal and plant remains found at different stratigraphical levels have a strange oriental appearance and differ specifically too much from those in the European Pleistocene to permit of direct faunistic correlations, and in the tropical regions such as Java the fluctuations of climate related to the glacial periods were not striking enough to provide a reasonable time scale by reference to any deposits so distinctive as boulder clay. Thus the anthropologist in the past has simply noted the personal opinion of local geologists on the antiquity of fossil man or palaeolithic cultures in the Far East, without really being clear as to the evidence on which the opinion was based (and suspecting, sometimes, that the geologist was not always quite clear himself).

The following notes are the result of an investigation undertaken as a bypath from he study of Egyptian shipping, in which questions arose as to the possibilities and probabilities of various constructional details, and the extent of the technical capacity available for the solution of shipbuilding problems. They were prepared in war-time, in England, when it was not possible to examine any actual specimens and are therefore based entirely on published data, descriptions, drawings and photographs. The purpose of the investigation was not concerned with the uses to which the Egyptians put their woodworking ability, or questions of artistic design or decorative or religious intention, but was solely concerned with their methods and means of fabricating wooden articles and structures, together with the associated employment of certain other materials which became integral parts of the structures.

It was early in 1944 that the production of a film on British prehistory was agreed upon at the Ministry of Education. It may be that war conditions made it easier I to get this unorthodox project adopted—the attention of a possible opposition was distracted. Nevertheless it is remarkable that in the middle of a war two Government departments (the Ministry of Information is the producing agency) should undertake a work apparently so unpractical and so little urgent. It would have been interesting to be present in the Admiralty office in the then very strictly prohibited area of the Orkneys when the request came through for a permit for a film director to visit the island’s prehistoric monuments. He was permitted. If there is a racial generalization which has some truth, it is that the English are a tolerant people.

In the course of many years of archaeological research in South Africa, cut off by the length of the continent from the European scene, various local problems, unrelated to those of Europe, necessarily arise. One of the most persistent has been that of the origin and age of coastal fishing enclosures whose distribution extends sporadically from the mouth of the Berg river in St. Helena Bay (northwest of Cape Town) to Kosi Bay on the Zululand coast, and perhaps even further in either direction. The known coastal range is well over 1000 miles. Any complete solution of the various problems raised must necessarily be shelved until petrol supplies permit the careful excavation of a series of surrounding midden deposits.

The enclosures are known locally as vywers (pronounced much as the English ‘favours’) or sometimes as viskraals, literally dams, or fish-corrals, and we can speak of them in English as tidal fish-traps. Happily their use continues, in a somewhat sporadic way, at several of the sites, and we can still study the methods used. In brief, the enclosure is built up as a dry-stone wall to such a height that normal high tides will cover the vywer and permit fish to swim freely over the enclosed area. As the tide sinks, the water runs out through the interstices between the stones, while the fish are trapped and can be clubbed and caught by hand. It is a simple application of the system used for netting fish, though here the dry-stone walling provides the imbrications.

In this publication the Director of the National Museum of Wales describes in detail a highly important find of Early Iron Age objects, made on a remote site in Anglesey in 1943 during wartime building operations. As its significance deserved, the discovery was given a good press at the time and readers of ANTIQUITY will already be familiar with it from the article reprinted in the June, 1944, number. But the title records that this too is an interim report: the final account, in which presumably will appear additional objects, one at least of which is of astounding quality, will be awaited with interest.

The water-mill with the horizontal wheel remains a characteristic feature of peasant Tc ulture in several Faeroe settlements, but its remaining days of usefulness among the islands are doubtless numbered. Formerly, nearly all the villages appear to have maintained one or more such mills for the production of rugmjJ, the coarse brown flour made from the six-rowed barley (Hordeurn vulgare Linn.), but in the majority of places these interesting structures have fallen into desuetude, or have vanished completely, within the last thirty or forty years.

Vortigern of Gloucester is perhaps the most maligned figure of British history. There can be little doubt that his reign ended in widespread disaster, but that very fact may have made him a traditional scapegoat. Some at least of the charges against him can readily be disproved—for instance, he certainly was not the father of the British-born Gallic Bishop, Faustus, by his daughter or anyone else. Faustus and Vortigern must have been born within a very few years of each other. Perhaps the Gildasian epithet of infuustus tyrunnus, applied to Vortigern, served as a starting-point.

‘Parched’ Apulia still describes the dominant characteristic of this region of southern Italy as aptly as when Horace wrote. The climate is one of sharp contrasts, especially apparent on the treeless plain round Foggia (the district known as the Capitanata). There, some midwinter snow and a few intermittent days of heavy rain between January and March are offset by almost continuous, and often pitiless, days of sunshine from April to the end of September, with the thermometer reaching 105° in the shade and scorching winds from the North in late summer absorbing what little moisture remains. The average annual rainfall at Foggia is only 18-19 inches, or no more than in parts of lowland Tunisia; but the fertile soil is today intensively cultivated by dry farming, with immense open arable fields. Harvesting begins at the end of May and, as there is often little depth of cultivated soil above the absorbent subsoils, by early in July the dusty ground is baked as hard as iron.

It is not generally recognized how important a part was played by birds in the guidance of early voyagers when sailing on the uncharted seas of the ancient world, and how their regular migrations year by year and season by season, along definite routes have contributed to the discovery of many lands and isolated islands. We know that Columbus made his first American landfall by noting the south-westerly direction taken by great flocks of small field-birds seen flying overhead in the evening towards land as yet out of sight of those aboard the ships; we know, too, that the significance of their flight was at once recognized, for did not Pinzon point out its meaning to his crew by his remark ‘Those birds know their business’ (Morison, 1841, 664-5)?

How true his words were we now know, for it is about the time of year (October) when Columbus saw these battalions of birds darkening the sky, that certain species of landbirds set out from the eastern shores of North America by a southerly route, via Bermuda, to seek a warmer climate and a more plentiful supply of food.