98 The Thirty -third General Meeting. 



with much regret, the very heavy losses which the Society has 

 sustained in the death of several of its most honoured Members 

 since this time last year. The loss of such men as Canon Rich 

 Jones, one of our most able and indefatigable fellow-workers in the 

 Society (a memoir of whom has already appeared in the Magazine), 

 and more recently of Mr. William Long-, of West Hay, Wring-ton, 

 to whom we are so deeply indebted for his admirable treatises on 

 Abury and Stonehenge, the former published in the fourth, the 

 latter in the sixteenth volume of the Magazine, are heavy blows 

 indeed to the Society, nor can their names be mentioned here without 

 a feeling of deep regret that their voices will be no longer heard 

 amongst us. We have, moreover, to lament the deaths of many 

 other valued members, of whom we may mention the late Earl of 

 Shaftesbury ; Archbishop Errington ; the Right Rev. Dr. Parfitt ; 

 Mr. Rigden, the very hospitable Mayor of Salisbury when the 

 Society met there in 1865; Colonel Perry Keene, who in 1869 

 presented the Society with the very curious and valuable original 

 Inquisition on Ruth Pierce, of Devizes Market Place renown ; Mr. 

 Arthur Gore, of Melksham, an original Member of the Society, 

 and a very frequent attendant at our Annual Meetings, and who 

 within a few weeks of his death sent me, for the Museum, a valuable 

 silver desk seal of the Tropenell family. There have been many other 

 losses, we regret to say, through death, removal from the county, or 

 resignation, which have diminished our numbers, so that the names 

 of Members now on the books amount only to three hundred and 

 forty-one, being a decrease of fourteen since last year. In regard 

 to out-door work, an examination of the very important barrow 

 at Heytesbury, well-known as the ' Bowlsbury Barrow/ was under- 

 taken at the spring of this year by Mr. William and Mr. Henry 

 Cunnington, who perseveringly continued their investigations in 

 this immense and difficult mound during many days, and of which 

 we hope to print a detailed account in the next number of the 

 Magazine. Sufficient for the present to say that some interesting 

 skulls and other human bones were exhumed, some of the skulls 

 cleft as if with a sword ! But I need not add that of course no im- 

 plements other than flint flakes were found in this veritable specimen 



