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archaeology, and other sciences is the duty which most clearly 

 presses .upon us, and which is within the capacity of any of our 

 Members. For the present, we may safely leave to the arm- 

 chair philosopher the task of interpreting these facts from a 

 comparative point of view. I venture to express the hope 

 that the list of our Members now engaged on this most im- 

 portant work will soon be increased ; and, in particular, that 

 a staff of younger workers will be ready to take the place of 

 the veterans when their time of service is over. 



I admit, of course, that I have no pretensions to discuss 

 the special problems to which our work is so largely devoted, 

 and I naturally feel extreme diffidence in venturing to draw 

 your attention to questions of another kind. At the same time, 

 while our attention is specially, and rightly, directed to the 

 world of nature, we are not neglectful of those investigations 

 into man, his history and development, in which I am specially 

 interested. Archaeology in all its branches falls within the 

 scope of our work, and during the past year one of our Members 

 Dr McAldowie, has favoured us with the results of his careful 

 enquiry into problems connected with the prehistoric monu- 

 ments which are so numerous within our district. I cannot, I 

 must admit, follow in all its details the theories which he has 

 advanced regarding the location of the Cotteswold barrows ; and 

 he will, I am sure, be prepared to admit that his work is still 

 in the preliminary stage, and that much remains to be done 

 before he will be in a position to lay before us the final results 

 of his investigations. In his view, if I interpret it aright, one, 

 or perhaps the main object of these monuments was to provide 

 a kind of calendar to define and regularise the seasonal feasts 

 and ceremonies .of their builders. Without pressing the argu- 

 ment that these rude stones seldom furnish accurate data 

 for gauging the position of the heavenly bodies, the real 

 difficulty in accepting these views seems to me to he in 

 the fact that the primary object of these monuments was not 

 astronomical, but sepulchral. This does not, of course, pre- 

 clude the possibility that, as in the case of many races in 

 various parts of the world, some attention may have been 

 given to the position of the corpse, or that it may have been 

 laid in the ground with the head or face turned towards the 



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