The main object of this paper is to exhibit to the Fellows a collection of the Notarial Marks used by the notarial members of the Scriveners' Company of London.

These marks are preserved in a book called the “Common Paper” of the Scriveners' Company, which is in fact the register of members of the Company from the year 1390 to the year 1628.

The interior of the beautiful church of Mildenhall in Suffolk is remarkable for its spacious and noble proportions. Its roof of oak must take a chief place amongst the many fine examples in the eastern counties. The chancel is of Early English architecture, but the nave and aisles belong to the fifteenth century. It is to the roof of the latter to which I shall direct your attention. It has never been painted, as was so commonly the practice in the county, and therefore has that grey colour which ensues when no extraneous matter has been applied. The roof of the nave is divided by seven principal beams, supported by spandrels with tracery, with additions sustaining the rafters.

We may accept as a fact that the Komans did advance in force, at any rate as far as the Graupian or Grampian Hills, and we may feel sure that they constructed camps, and strong camps too, along their line of march.

It is with unfeigned hesitation that I venture to bring forward a new restoration of the Halicarnassian Mausoleum. For more than a century the form of this celebrated monument has been the enigma of architectural antiquaries, and down to the present time no solution has received so unanimous an assent as to be deemed conclusive. It is not indeed surprising that the earlier theories, those of Caylus, Choiseul-Groufner, Canina, Texier, and others, should have been discordant, and to most minds unsatisfactory; for they were founded solely on the notices of the building found in ancient authors, and these notices are brief, desultory, sometimes veiled in figurative language, and sometimes to all appearance contradictory to each other, if not to themselves. Even the ingenious and tasteful designs of the late Professor Cockerell and Mr. Edward Falkener were prepared in ignorance of any material remains beyond the few slabs of sculptured frieze procured in 1846 by Sir Stratford Canning from the citadel of Budrum. But when at length it was resolved to supplement theory by fact, and to procure monumental in addition to literary evidence, when the resoures of the British Government were liberally placed at the disposal of an eminent archaeologist, to excavate the whole site of the Mausoleum, and bring to England all the remains of its architecture or sculpture which could illustrate its construction, it might have been expected that the mists of uncertainty would have disappeared in a flood of light. But very different has been the event.

The finest collection of ancient portraits from Egypt that has found its way to England is undoubtedly that brought over by Professor Flinders Petrie in 1889, and exhibited by him in that year at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. It had been found during the previous winter months in the cemetery of Hawara, in the Fayyum. This fine series of portraits, for such they evidently were, had been painted in wax upon wooden panels, and, according to the opinion of Professor Petrie, had been done after death. They are mostly to be seen in the British Museum and National Gallery, but some are in private hands.

In the autumn of 1892, Mr. Edwin Henty, in planting trees on his property on High Down Hill, in the parish of Ferring, in Sussex, came upon a number of graves, which, from the character of the relics found in them, were readily determined to be of Saxon origin. Mr. Henty has carefully preserved all that he could secure, but from the unfortunate accident that the men employed in the work were strangers, and not his own workmen, there is reason to believe that a number of the articles found were disposed of to visitors and others.

It is comparatively seldom that relics of antiquity from the American continent are laid before the Society. There is one good reason for this, in the impossibility, in most cases, of assigning any date to American antiquities. We may be able, from internal evidence, to show that an object was made after the discovery of the continent, and in that case it belongs to the beginning of modern times. If, on the other hand, there is reason for placing it before the time of Columbus, there is little to say beyond the bare statement of that fact. In the absence of intelligible history, it is difficult to see how we are to pass beyond this stage. Among the more civilised peoples, such as the Mexicans and Peruvians, it is easy enough to distinguish and classify the artistic productions of the several great tribes, but to discriminate between the buildings or sculptures of, for instance, the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries is another matter, and one as to which there would probably be as many opinions as men.

The MS. Psalter, which is exhibited by our Fellow the Rev. Canon Cooke, by the kind permission of the Governors of the Grammar School of Bury St. Edmund's, is a fine example of an English monastic service-book, and is of interest because it can be shown by internal evidence to have belonged to the great abbey of St. Edmund.

By the courtesy of our Fellow Thomas Brooke, Esq. a MS. Pontifical is exhibited, with pictured subjects of great beauty and in a splendid state of preservation. It has been briefly described in the Catalogue of the Brooke Library under thetitle Pontificate Romanum and is there set down as the work ofan English scribe, and assigned to the thirteenth century, but it will be presently seen that this description needs revision.

The remains which are the subject of these notes are, unfortunately, but scanty, and belong to the undercroft of the chapter-house, rather than to the chapter-house itself. Still, slight as they are, they enable us to determine with sufficient accuracy the plan of what must have been a beautiful addition to this most beautiful church.

In the year 1893 the British Museum acquired a remarkable Latin deed on papyrus, which, it is believed, was found a short time before in the Fayyum of Egypt. (Plate XLIV.) As in many particulars it is of unusual interest, I submit the following description to the Fellows of the Society.

The report which. I have the honour to lay before the Society to-night on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Silchester Excavation Fund deals with the excavations carried on during the fifth year of the systematic exploration of the site.