Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, and Articles. 337 





































lts Botany. The Rev. E. S. Marshall, F.L.S, Vicar of Keevil, 
publishes in The Journal of Botany, June, 1904, pp. 166—174, ‘‘ West 
Wilts Plant-Notes for 1903,”’ containing records of the occurrence in the 
county of a good many plants not given in Preston’s Flora. 
Bronze Age ‘Drinking Cups,” or “Beakers.” Under the 
title of “The Oldest Bronze Age Ceramic Type in Britain; its close 
Analogies on the Rhine; its probable origin in Central Europe,” the 
Hon. J. Abercromby contributes an important paper to the Journal of 
the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxxii., 373—397, with fourteen plates, 
giving a Map of the Distribution of Drinking Cups in Great Britain, and 
admirable photos of no less than ninety-five specimens, British and 
Foreign. Of the fifty-three British specimens illustrated eleven are 
Wiltshire specimens—one in the Ashmolean Museum, two in the British 
Museum, and the remaining eight in our own Museum at Devizes. 
Some of the cups with recurved rims (type B) from the Rhine are almost 
exactly like Wiltshire specimens, and, as the author says, ‘‘ they must 
have had a common ancestry. The tribe that introduced the earliest 
beakers of type B into Britain must at one time have lived on the Rhine.” 
Mr. Abercromby considers that the ‘‘ Beaker,” or ‘‘ Drinking Cup,” as 
it has hitherto been generally called, is the oldest form of Bronze Age 
pottery found in Great Britain, that Dr. Thurnam’s two types A and B 
—the types found chiefly in the South of England—are the earliest 
forms, that they date from the very beginning of the Bronze Age, and 
are earlier than the cinerary urns and incense cups and food vessels, 
and that the Bronze Age people who made them came to Britain from 
the country of the middle Rhine. 
Modern Boeotia, Pictures from Life in a Country 
Parish, by Deborah Primrose. Methuen & Co., 36, Essex Street, 
W.C. London. 1904. 7% x 5. Pp. viii., 223. Linen. 
Though the names of the places are disguised throughout, and not 
even the county is mentioned, it is fairly clear to those who know 
Winterbourne Bassett, that that village is the origina] of ‘‘Snorum 
End,” and that Deborah Primrose is really the wife of the Rey. R. L. 
_ Ottley, who from 1897 to 1903 was Rector of that parish. The village, 
the Church, the rectory, and the surrounding country are all unmistakably 
portrayed, though the language spoken by the inhabitants is not always 
irreproachable Wiltshire. The book is the work of a keen observer who 
feels and remorselessly describes the drawbacks, the unspeakable dullness 
and loneliness of the life in a small country village, remote from 
neighbours and the railway station, to people of education and culture 
who have been accustomed to town life and who having no country 
interests to start with, entirely fail to acquire any as the result of their 
country life. She writes very cleverly and well, but the Wiltshire 
- labourer and his wife and children have nothing to reeommend them in 
__ her eyes except their cleanliness, their honesty, and their independence. 
They are wanting in natural affection, in any sense of religion, in the 
RXXIII.—-NO. CL Z 
