Recent Wiltshire Boohs, Pamphlets, and Articles. 337 



Wilts Botany. The Eev. E. S. Marshall, F.L.S, Vicar of Keevil, 

 publishes in The Journal of Botany, June, 1904, pp. 166 — 174, "West 

 Wilts Plant-Notes for 1903," containing records of the occurrence in the 

 county of a good many plants not given in Preston's Flora. 



Bronze Age "Drinking Cups," or "Beakers." Under the 

 title of "The Oldest Bronze Age Ceramic Type in Britain; its close 

 Analogies on the Khine ; its probable origin in Central Europe," the 

 Hon. J. Abercromby contributes an important paper to the Journal of 

 the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxxii., 373—397, with fourteen plates, 

 giving a Map of the Distribution of Drinking Cups in Great Britain, and 

 admirable photos of no less than ninety-five specimens, British and 

 Foreign. Of the fifty-three British specimens illustrated eleven are 

 Wiltshire specimens — one in the Ashmolean Museum, two in the British 

 Museum, and the remaining eight in our own Museum at Devizes. 

 Some of the cups with recurved rims (type B) from the Rhine are almost 

 exactly like Wiltshire specimens, and, as the author says, "they must 

 have had a common ancestry. The tribe that introduced the earliest 

 beakers of type B into Britain must at one time have lived on the Rhine." 

 Mr. 'Abercromby considers that the "Beaker," or " Drinking Cup," as 

 it has hitherto been generally called, is the oldest form of Bronze Age 

 pottery found in Great Britain, that Dr. Thurnam's two types A and B 

 — the types found chiefly in the South of England — are the earliest 

 forms, that they date from the very beginning of the Bronze Age, and 

 are earlier than the cinerary urns and incense cups and food vessels, 

 and that the Bronze Age people who made them came to Britain from 

 the country of the middle Rhine. 



A Modern Boeotia, Pictures from Life in a Country 



Parish, by Deborah Primrose. Methuen & Co., 36, Essex Street, 

 W.C. London. 1904. 7| X 5. Pp. viii., 223. Linen. 



Though the names of the places are disguised throughout, and not 

 even the county is mentioned, it is fairly clear to those who know 

 Winterbourne Bassett, that that village is the original of " Snorum 

 End," and that Deborah Primrose is really the wife of the Rev. R. L. 

 Ottley, who from 1897 to 1903 was Rector of that parish. The village, 

 the Church, the rectory, and the surrounding county are all unmistakably 

 portrayed, though the language spoken by the inhabitants is not always 

 irreproachable Wiltshire. The book is the work of a keen observer who 

 feels and remorselessly describes the drawbacks, the unspeakable dullness 

 and loneliness of the life in a small country village, remote from 

 neighbours and the railway station, to people of education and culture 

 who have been accustomed to town life and who having no country 

 interests to start with, entirely fail to acquire any as the result of their 

 country life. She writes very cleverly and well, but the Wiltshire 

 labourer and his wife and children have nothing to recommend them in 

 her eyes except their cleanliness, their honesty, and their independence. 

 They are wanting in natural affection, in any sense of religion, in the 

 VOL. XXXIII. — NO. CI. Z 



