4 president's address. 



that Science confronts us at every hour with another and a sterner 

 significance ! The very suggestion of such a subject of discourse might 

 seem replete with cruel irony. 



And yet, especially as regards the prehistoric side of Archaeology, 

 something may be said for a theme which, in the midst of Armageddon, 

 draws our minds from present anxieties to that still, passionless domain 

 of the Past which lies behind the limits even of historic controversies. 

 The Science of Antiquity as there seen in its purest form depends, 

 indeed, on evidence and rests on principles indistinguishable from those 

 of the sister Science of Geology. Its methods are stratigraphic. As 

 in that case the successive deposits and their characteristic contents — 

 often of the most fragmentary kind — enable the geologist to recon- 

 struct the fauna and flora, the climate and physical conditions, of the 

 past ages of the world, and to follow out their gradual transitions or 

 dislocations, so it is with the archaeologist in dealing with unwritten 

 history. 



In recent years — not to speak of the revelations of Late Quaternary 

 culture, on which I shall presently have occasion to dwell — in Egypt, 

 in Babylonia, in Ancient Persia, in the Central Asian deserts, or, 

 coming nearer home, in the iEgean lands, the patient exploration of 

 early sites, in many cases of huge stratified mounds, the unearthing of 

 buried buildings, the opening of tombs, and the research of minor relics, 

 has reconstituted the successive stages of whole fabrics of former 

 civilisation, the very existence of which was formerly unsuspected. 

 Even in later periods. Archaeology, as a dispassionate witness, has been 

 continually checking, supplementing, and illustrating written history. 

 It has called back to our upper air, as with a magician's wand, shapes 

 and conditions that seemed to have been irrevocably lost in the night 

 of Time. 



Thus evoked, moreover, the Past is often seen to hold a mirror to 

 the Future — correcting wrong impressions — the result of some tem- 

 porary revolution in the whirligig of Time — by the more permanent 

 standard of abiding conditions, and affording in the solid evidence of 

 past well-being the ' substance of things hoped for.' Nowhere, indeed, 

 has this been more in evidence than in that vexed region between the 

 Danube and the Adriatic, to-day the home of the Serbian race, to the 

 antiquarian exploration of which many of the earlier years of my 

 own life were devoted. 



What visions, indeed, do those investigations not recall! Imperial 

 cities, once the seats of wide administration and of prolific mints, sunk 

 to neglected villages, vestiges of great engineering works, bridges, 

 aqueducts, or here a main line of ancient highway hardly traceable even 

 as a track across the wilderness ! Or, again, the signs of medieval 

 revival above the Eoman ruins — ^I'emains of once populous mining 



