When Queen Mary was dying, according to Mistress Rice as quoted by Holinshed, she declared, “When I am dead and opened you shall find Calais lying in my heart.”

In her letter of January 7, 1558, to the gentlemen of every shire, urging them to raise men for the succour of that town, which though she was not then aware of it had already fallen; the Queen spoke of Calais as the chief jewel of the realm. That it was so in the opinion of many there is no doubt, and the delineations of the English possessions in France of those days always present the district as viewed from this country, that is with the actual south at the top of the map.

In the following pages will be found the result of a somewhat careful examination of all the existing ancient sites in the district of Furness, in North Lancashire. The remains themselves are very varied in character, ranging from the rude enclosure of dry-built masonry to the burh of the Anglo-Saxon lord. The accompanying illustrations represent all the most important examples of these; and, as far as I am aware, every site (excepting some groups of cairns, which on parts of the fells are innumerable) will be found described with some detail in the text.

The discovery of additional subjects since I last had the honour to exhibit tracings of the Friskney wall-paintings has shown me that there was a general purpose of doctrinal teaching in the whole series, the recognition of which purpose gives a clue to the interpretation of each picture. The intention was, as I believe, to represent by a succession of subjects, progressively from west to east, the presence of Christ. First, in the flesh, “His earthly ministry”; second, in the “host”; the former in the series on the north, the latter on the south clerestory. The tracings before us are from the latter. They are a continuation (going from west to east) of the two subjects recorded in Vol. XLVIII. of Archaeologia, viz., The Gathering of the Manna, and The Last Supper. I have numbered them in the order in which they stand in the church, occupying the three spandrels east of that which contains the picture of The Last Supper, i.e. on the clerestory wall above the three easternmost bays of the south arcade.

That the Egypt of the Pharaohs was famous from the earliest times for the manufacture of linen is evident not only from the splendid specimens of linen bandages and sheets in which mummies are wrapped, but also from the testimony of ancient writers. Egyptian linen was, for the most part, made of flax, and a good idea of what an important matter the success of the flax crop was in Egypt may be gathered from the fact that the smiting of the flax when in. bloom by the hail (mentioned in Exodus ix. 31), was considered to be as great a calamity as the smiting of the barley when in the ear. The finest and best linen was worn by the priests of Egypt in the form of shirts, the κιθῶνας λινέους of Herodotus, ii. 37, 81, a commoner and coarser sort was used for the final bandages and “sheet” of mummies, perhaps also for sleeping upon, compare the of Prov. vii. 16, and the coarsest sort of all for sails, awnings, etc. Nearly all the flax woven in Egypt was grown in the Delta, and the best quality appears to have come from Pelusium; according to Strabo, Panopolis was famous in olden times for the manufacture of linen, and working in stones, and it is easy to show that the art of weaving linen and of ornamenting garments with woven or worked designs did not pass away from that town until ten or eleven centuries after the birth of Christ.

The crossbow which forms the subject of this paper may be, I venture to think, of interest to the Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, as it is a weapon of somewhat uncommon construction, of good artistic decoration, and more especially because the date which is inscribed on it and the escutcheons of arms which it bears, enable me to assign its ownership very definitely to a historical personage.

There are few points in ancient history more interesting than an inquiry into the age and object of the great “dykes”; such as those of north Wiltshire, between central and southern England; those north of Cambridge, which bar the only access into East Anglia from the south; those which run from the estuary of the Dee to that of the Severn, cutting off the whole of Wales; or the great earthwork nearly parallel to the Roman wall which crossed the island from the Solway to the Tyne.

I have the honour to lay before the Society an archaeological survey in which will be found the principal and most of the minor archaeological discoveries which have been made in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands, in other words in the diocese of Carlisle and the parish of Alston, which though in the county of Cumberland is not in the diocese of Carlisle. The Survey is based upon the model of the able Survey of Kent by our Fellow Mr. George Payne, printed in Archaeologia, with one or two deviations which I venture to think improvements. For instance, arranging the Topographical Index in three columns instead of four, so obtaining more space in the three left, while the duty done by the abolished column (Mr. Payne's second column) is discharged by appropriate cross-headings. In the first column, that headed “Locality,” I have given, after the name of a place, the reference to the quarter (N.E., N.W., S.W., or S.E.,) of the 6-inch Ordnance Map in which the place is or should be marked. The labour of doing this is no light work, and the mere turning over and over of some hundred and fifty of these sheets entails considerable fatigue. But once done, its convenience to all using the index is obvious. Thus two places of the same name allocate themselves at once without the necessity of a long description, e.g. in Cumberland, Kirkland, 15 N.W. and Kirkland, 51 S.E. at once define and differentiate themselves.

We have the honour to bring before the meeting to-night the record of the third year's excavations on the site of the Roman city at Silchester.