6 president's address. 



relating to Britain been preserved we might have had, in his rugged 

 style, some partial sketch of the Province as it existed in the age of 

 its most complete Eomanisation. As it is, so far as historians are 

 concerned, we are left in almost complete darkness. Here, again, it 

 is through archeeological research that light has penetrated, and thanks 

 to the thoroughness and persistence of our own investigators, town 

 sites such as Silchester in Eoman Britain have been more completely 

 uncovered than those of any other Province.* Nor has any part of 

 Britain supplied more important contributions in this field than the 

 region of the Eoman Wall, that great limitary work between the Solway 

 and the mouth of the Tyne that once marked the Northernmost 

 European barrier of civilised dominion. 



Speaking here, on the site of Hadrian's bridge-head station that 

 formed its Eastern key, it would be impossible for me not to pay a 

 passing tribute, however inadequate, to the continuous work of explora- 

 tion and research carried out by the Society of Antiquaries of New- 

 castle, now for over a hundred years in existence, worthily seconded 

 by its sister Society on the Cumbrian side, and of which the volumes of 

 the respective Proceedings and Transactions, Archceologia Mliana, and 

 last but not least the Lapidarium Sepientrionale, are abiding records. 

 The basis of methodical study was here the Survey of the Wall carried 

 out, together with that of its main military approach, the Wathng 

 Street, by MacLauchlan, under the auspices of Algernon, fourth Duke 

 of Northumberland. And who, however lightly touching on such a 

 theme, can overlook the services of the late Dr. CoUingwood Bruce, 

 the Grand Old Man, not only of the Wall itself, but of all pertaining to 

 Border Antiquities, distinguished as an investigator for his scholarship 

 and learning, whose lifelong devotion to his subject and contagious 

 enthusiasm made the Eoman Wall, as it had never been before, a 

 household word? 



New points of view have arisen, a stricter method and a greater 

 subdivision of labour have become imperative in this as in other depart- 

 ments of research. We must, therefore, rejoice thet local explorers 

 have more and more availed themselves of the co-operation, and 

 welcomed the guidance of those equipped with comparative knowledge 

 drawn from other spheres. The British Vallum, it is now reahsed, 

 must be looked at with perpetual reference to other frontier lines, such 

 as the Germanic or the Ehaetian limes ; local remains of every kind 

 have to be correlated with similar discoveries throughout the length 

 and breadth of the Eoman Empire. 



This attitude in the investigation of the remains of Eoman Britain — 

 the promotion of which owes so much to the energy and experience of 

 Professor Haverfield — has in recent years conducted excavation to 

 ' See Haverfield : Roman Britain in 1913, p. 86. 



