In offering some observations on the prehistory of Malta, the fruit of a month's visit to the island in the Easter Vacation of 1927, Dr. Marett disclaimed all intention of contributing positively to the subject, and hoped at most to draw attention to sundry matters standing in need of further investigation. All British archæologists should pay Malta a visit, if only in order to enjoy the experience of visiting its wonderful monuments under the guidance of local experts such as Professor T. Zammit and Dr. G. Despott, who are as kind as they are learned and patriotically keen. Dr. Marett was also anxious to acknowledge his great debt to the Royal Air Force for allowing him to explore Malta and Gozo from the air—a most instructive method not only of taking in the ground-plan of a given site but likewise of viewing the various sites in their geographical relation to each other; while several magnificent series of photographs taken by the R.A.F. in the course of their aerial surveys were most generously placed at his disposal and proved to be archæologically, not less than otherwise, of the greatest interest and value.

On the 26th October, 1908, at the inaugural meeting of this Society, Dr. Allen Sturge, its first president, delivered his Presidential Address. In this he reviewed the situation of prehistory, and more especially of Palæolithic archæology, as it stood at that time, ten years after the death of Gabriel de Mortillet, and forty years after the death of Boucher de Perthes. Dr. Sturge concluded, incidentally, that this country was immeasurably behind France, Belgium, and Germany in the pursuit of our science, a reproach which the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia has since done much to remove. Three years later Colonel Underwood, Dr. Sturge's successor in this chair, gave a further brief outline of recent discoveries in Palæolithic archæology. The general aspect of the subject was thus temporarily exhausted, and the last thirteen Addresses have dealt with some particular aspect of prehistory, or with some special piece of work. To-day, within a few weeks of the twentieth birthday of our Society, I feel that the time has come when it is again legitimate to attempt a more general view. The twenty years which separate us from Dr. Sturge's first Presidential address have not perhaps been marked by any single startling discovery in the region of human palæontology, but they have brought us a great mass of new evidence, much of which is still imperfectly assimilated, and with this evidence they have brought the first signs of a new orientation of our science.

The following sites were discovered by Mr. and Mrs. Harry Milton and myself during the summer and autumn of 1926, while I was excavating the Devil's Tower Cave at Gibraltar.

(i) Llanos de la Horadada. This is a surface site, lying on rising ground to the west of the road from San Roque to the Rio Guadiaro, near the seventh kilometre-stone out of San Roque. The Llanos de la Horadada is a group of low hills forming a southern extension of the Sierra del Arco; it takes its name from a tunnel-like cave, the Cueva de la Horadada, which runs through an outcrop of Eocene sandstone about 1 km. to the west of the road.

In a recently-ploughed field lying immediately above the road we found a small number of flint and quartzite implements, two of which, a small disc and a chopper, were unmistakably Mousterian (Fig. II, Nos. 1 and 2). The implements and flakes were all slightly abraded, and those which were made of flint were deeply patinated, some being white and others light brown.

During 1926 and 1927 my researches under the auspices of the Percy Sladen Trustees were continued upon the Cromer coast of Norfolk, and a quantity of additional evidence relating to the archæological contents of the Forest Bed obtained. The remarkable spreads of flints exposed at low tide upon the foreshore at Cromer, East Runton, West Runton, and Sheringham were again examined, while the Estuarine Beds and the Upper Freshwater Bed of the Forest Bed Series received also some amount of attention.

I have to record my thanks to Messrs. J. P. T. Burchell, H. H. Halls, Guy Maynard, and J. E. Sainty for valuable help during these researches.

The further examination of the large spreads of flint present upon the foreshore at Cromer, East Runton, West Runton, and Sheringham has yielded many new and interesting facts regarding them. These spreads all rest upon the chalk, which along the coast-line between Cromer and Sheringham is exposed in places at low tide. Moreover, though differing in extent, they all present, to the casual observer, a very similar appearance, and are without doubt at the present time being subjected to closely similar physical conditions.

In 1922 we recorded sixteen species of non-marine mollusca from Hoxne but of these only eight were known from extant examples, the remainder being listed on the authority of either Prof. Prestwich, or the late Clement Reid, and we noted that two horizons were present, Early Pleistocene and Late Pleistocene (Proc. Geol. Assoc, Vol. XXXIII (1922), pp. 137–165.) Through the kindness of Prof. P. G. H. Boswell and Mr. J. Reid Moir samples of peaty earth containing shells from Hoxne were submitted to us for examination. There came from Section 4, layer G (see Proc. Prehistoric Soc., East Anglia, Vol. V (1926), p. 145) and we are greatly indebted to these gentlemen for their kindness.

This has already been described in Vol. IV, Pt. II, p. 165–176, and in Vol. V, Part I, p. 56–61. During the past year the excavation has been continued with the constant assistance of Mr. E. H. Barclay and Mr. H. H. Halls, and we feel that now the most prolific portion of the site has been thoroughly examined. The most welcome finds have been three implements which Dr. Breuil characterised as “axe-burins” (Figs. 1, 2), for the very interesting and puzzling specimen obtained last year by Mr. Barclay had been described either as an axe or a “gros burin” (Vol. V, Pt. I, p. 58). In its size and general appearance it differed much from the usual Kelling specimens, and these new finds, smaller in size and obviously belonging in technique to the main industry, have served to establish the type as characteristic of the site. A number of burins of cave types (Figs. 3, 4) have also been obtained, but, though careful search has been made for the typical Tardenoisian micro-burins, not a single example has been observed.

In the Proceedings of this Society (Vol. V, pt. 1, pp. 73–8) I described an epi-palæolithic factory site at Lower Halstow, Kent, situated beneath an accumulation of marsh deposits. In addition I recorded the discovery of Early Iron Age and Roman pottery in the immediate neighbourhood made under similar circumstances. In the course of the above paper I endeavoured to correlate the facts at my disposal so as to afford a general appreciation of the results obtained from the first year's work upon the site. Upon resuming operations in the following year I immediately put to the test the deductions and facts which I had been working upon with the result that one deduction and one fact needed amendment. In my first report I stated that the peat overlying the stone-age factory site represented the Roman land-surface. Though, unquestionably, this peat did, in places, constitute the land-surface in Roman times, it was not the general rule, since its proper stratigraphical position occurs some 2-ft. 6-in. below the horizon of the Early Iron Age occupation level. Here and there, however, this intervening 2-ft. 6-in. of marsh clay deposits had become eroded away with the result that, in these instances, the Roman invaders were living upon a considerably earlier land-surface.

I am exhibiting a number of flakes and implements, which appear to be of Le Moustier date, from Acton on the Taplow Terrace, and West Drayton and Iver on the Boyn Hill Terrace.

The Acton specimens are from the immediate vicinity of the working floor discovered by the late Mr. Allen Brown some forty years ago. During recent excavations in Creffield Road, I picked out of the brick-earth, thrown up from a depth of 4 to 6½ feet, seventy humanly struck flints. Forty-six are unpatinated, fresh-looking and unabraded, twenty have a bluey-white patination, amongst which are several with slightly dulled edges, and four are light-ochreous. The freshness of the cortex on several of the unpatinated flints suggests that some of the raw material was derived directly from the chalk. The majority are simple flakes and spalls. The remainder consists of eighteen small Levallois flakes, varying in size from 2 by 1½ to 3½ by 2¼ inches, one small tortoise core, a small flattish core with flaking on one face at right angles to that on the other, a flint pebble which has been used as a hammerstone, one small point and two exceptional pieces. One of these is a fairly typical graver (bee de flûte) with bluey-white patination (Fig. 1); the other may be described as a busked graver, it is made from a thickish external flake and is unpatinated (Fig. 2). A few of the flakes shew slight signs of use.

It is more than twenty years since my father, Mr. S. K. Turner discovered evidence of the presence of man in the Luton valley. Stimulated by his early successes he was led to continue his search, and the result of his labours, coupled, in more recent years with my own, has been that the collections of museums both at home and abroad have been enriched.

During the seasons 1926-8 excavations have been undertaken in this cavern by a party of members of the Torquay Natural History Society, co-operating with a sub-committee of Section H of the British Association. A trench 60 feet long has been carried along the northern wall of the chambers known as the Vestibule and the N.E. Gallery so as to pass directly beneath the original position of the Black Band, a prehistoric hearth of very late Magdalenian age discovered in 1866 by William Pengelly. The Black Band adhered to the base of the upper or Granular Stalagmite, and at a depth of 4 feet lower in the Cave-earth, Pengelly had collected a couple of rostrate scrapers, an end-scraper with opposed point, and a bone pin, identified by Miss Garrod in 1926 as belonging to an industry of Middle Aurignacian type.