The foreshore exposures of Pleistocene deposits at Clacton and at Lion Point, two miles to the south-west, mark cross-sections of an ancient river channel which now extends inland in a broad curve between these two localities. The deposits have become famous through the investigations of Mr S. Hazzledine Warren, who has for many years kept a careful watch on the exposures, and who has published a number of important papers on his discoveries (Warren, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1933, 1934).

The gravels in the Clacton channel have yielded a contemporary palaeolithic flake-industry which was recognised by the Abbé Breuil as identical in style with an industry represented in the Middle Pleistocene gravels of Mesvin, Belgium (Warren, 1922). Breuil (1929, p. 6) has since proposed the name of Clactonian for this industry in view of the fact that in the Mesvin deposits the implements in question are in a derived condition, and associated with other industries, whereas at Clacton there is no doubt as to their contemporaneity with the containing gravel. Industries of Clacton style have since been recognised in numerous localities, not only in this country, but also on the Continent (Breuil, 1932). They appear to represent a widespread cultural tradition, possibly of Asiatic origin, and very probably ancestral to the later Mousterian industries.

The industry of the type station—the Clacton-on-Sea district of Essex—represents neither the earliest nor the latest stage of evolution of the Clactonian culture, and importance attaches to establishing its exact position in the Lower Palaeolithic sequence.

If our Society has for the current year, chosen a President representing Irish Archaeology, I hope it will not be misunderstood if I interpret it as a compliment to recent progress of work and research in Irish Archaeology rather than as a personal tribute.

This is not rhetoric. Most Curators of large Museums are constantly facing the danger of becoming nothing else but glorified stamp-collectors; and, whilst they gradually acquire an ever-increasing first-hand knowledge of the actual material, it is the very material itself, with its continuous additions, which absorbs all too frequently their best energies.

Hence, with notable exceptions, the Museum career does not make for fertility in literary output; and it is principally occasions like the present one which almost compel a museum Curator to open, as it were, his drawers of new material and to bring some of their contents to the knowledge of fellow-workers in his own and in allied fields of learning.

The authors of these notes acknowledge the ready collaboration of the numerous excavators who have contributed information or notes concerning work carried out during the present year.