C. PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



stones in that wonderful locality for prehistoric stone monuments, 

 where their numbers are only equalled by their variety. Quite 

 recently some of these have been taken for road-making. The 

 Royal Commissioners on Ancient Monuments for England and 

 Wales, lately appointed, will, doubtless, do much towards 

 safeguarding them generally. Another most creditable piece of 

 work, which we inspected last summer, is the discovery, by the 

 intelligent study of various small points connected with its 

 history, of an important addition to the splendid Abbey of 

 Glastonbury by Mr. Bligh Bond, who is well known to us, as he 

 has kindly acted as our guide more than once at our meetings. 

 An interesting paper on stone circles was read to the British 

 Association, in which the author says that the genuine stone 

 circle apparently occurs only in the British Isles, and that most, 

 if not all, of the circles found in other countries are merely 

 retaining walls, left after the tumulus, which they retained, had 

 been removed. I have read descriptions of stone circles 

 in Brittany, 300 feet across, which could hardly be the 

 walls of a former tumulus ; but I have not seen them. 

 (Barrows of S. Brittany, Lukis, p. 17 and elsewhere.) In 

 Aberdeenshire, in the midst of numerous stone circles, are found 

 remains of men of a very unique type short, with broad heads 

 who are, it is suggested, Akkadians or Hittites, who migrated by 

 sea to these islands about 2000 B.C., as they seem to correspond 

 to them in structure better than any others. It is also suggested 

 that these were the founders of stone circles. In a cave at 

 Niaux, in France, have been found Palaeolithic drawings of 

 animals transfixed by arrows, showing conclusively (as it is stated) 

 the use of the bow at that early period, also even the footprints 

 of the artists on the floor, together with pictures of fish, &c., 

 engraved on the ground. No doubt, the drawings are more 

 distinctly arrows, and not spears, in some cases ; but in the 

 illustration I have seen they look more like spears, the shafts 

 being quite plain, and I am not aware that a bow occurs amongst 

 the drawings to give authority to the statement about its use. In 

 a cave in the Dordogne Valley an early human fossil has been 



