492 CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 
section of the London inventory, edited by Mr. C. R. Ashbee; and by the passing of 
the second Ancient Monuments Protection Act, largely based on suggestions from 
General Pitt Rivers and from the Council of the National Trust, whereby County 
Councils were given powers similar to those of the Commissioners of Works in Ireland, 
and empowered both to expend voluntary contributions and to make agreements with 
other bodies (such as the National Trust) for the maintenance of monuments, and to 
agree with an owner for public access to such monuments. 
For the systematic registration of ancient buildings, the Historical Monuments 
Commission was established in 1908, and a third ‘ Ancient Monuments Consolidation 
Act’ was passed in 1913, still further enlarging the powers of the Commissioners of 
Works, and providing both for the inclusion of other classes of buildings, and for their 
conservation at the public expense. 
Sites other than Buildings hardly needed protection until the spread of large towns 
and extensive mining and quarrying began to threaten some of them, and others were 
imperilled through mere inability of private owners to repair them or prevent deface- 
ment by ‘ trippers ’ and other kinds of hooligan. No systematic action seems to have 
been taken to preserve them until the National Trust, already mentioned, was incor- 
porated in 1895. This was at first a private society, founded to acquire by voluntary 
contributions any sites or buildings which might be in danger of the kind here described. 
But its operations were so efficient and valuable that in 1907 it was incorporated 
under the National Trust Act, which makes its properties inalienable, and provided 
for representation of certain learned institutions on its council. At present it owns 
about seventy separate plots of land, some of considerable extent, eighteen old 
buildings of architectural or historical importance, and several commemorative 
monuments of recent date. 
Some of the National Trust’s properties belong to our last class of sites, the interest 
of which is neither historical nor artistic, but primarily scientific. They constitute, 
that is, part of the national wealth and irreplaceable store of scientific material, for 
advanced study, and for educational ends. Such are the haunts of rare animals and 
plants, as Wicken Fen ; Burwell Fen; Leigh Woods, near Bristol, famous for their 
nightingales ; Blakeney Point in Norfolk, accepted by the Trust under express con- 
ditions of preserving the natural flora and fauna; the Ruskin Reserve near Abingdon, 
“to be kept for all time in its natural conditions’ ; and, acquired in the course of the 
present year 1924, the Farne Islands, a great breeding ground of sea birds, and the 
ancient deer-park of Hatfield Forest. 
But there is still need for vigilance and prompt action wherever danger threatens. 
Neither private prospectors nor Government departments seem to have learned yet, 
with any security, that elementary consideration for national well-being of the kind 
from which our retrospect started. Only last year there was threefold provocation 
of this kind: the Marconi Company’s project of installing, under licence from the 
Postmaster-General, a great wireless station in the midst of the megalithic site at 
Avebury ; the risk to the amenities of Holmbury Hill through the proposal to instal 
there a part of the scientific equipment of the Admiralty; and the attempt of the 
War Office to exclude the public from the neighbourhood of Lulworth Cove, valuable 
no less for its exceptional beauty than for its classic exposure of jurassic strata. 
Fortunately, at Avebury and Holmbury Hill wiser counsels prevailed when the 
inevitable consequences of these plans were explained to the Ministries concerned ; 
the fate of Lulworth, however, is still in suspense, in spite of vigorous representations 
from the British Association and other learned societies, and in the press. 
Delegates will remember the part played in this necessary protest by last year’s 
Conference during the Liverpool Meeting of this Association ; and are referred to the 
Report of the Council to the Toronto Meeting for an account of the steps which are 
being taken to ensure concerted and immediate action in the event of other incidents 
of the same kind. 
The sole effective remedy, so far as can be seen at present, would appear to be that 
learned societies even if not immediately concerned in a particular problem of con- 
servation should take concerted steps to promote legislation wider in scope and more 
strictly worded than the Ancient Monuments Act now in force, for the protection of 
such sites. Such a Bill should be drafted on the lines of the present Act, but with the 
proviso that a site or monument once scheduled should be preserved against any kind 
of disturbance, either by a Government department or by any other person or body 
of persons, so long as it remains in the schedule; and that the removal of a site or 
monument from the schedule should only be effected by a deliberate decision of 
