NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20251, 10 May 1929, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

MONUMENTS OF BRITAIN.

A complete list was recently published by tho British Government of the monuments to which State protection has been granted under the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act, 1913. The book contains the names of more than 2500 monuments, ranging from prehistoric camps, stone circles and barrows to the remains of abbeys, castles, bridges and even relatively modern buildings of special interest. Among recent additions to the list the most important is that of tho Roman wall from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Carlisle. Not only is tho wall itself scheduled but also the stone-built camps, of which there are a certain number, tho mile castles which occur, roughly, at a distance of every Roman mile, the turrets and subsidiary works and the earthwork or vallum, running at varying distances to tho south of the stone wall, which appears to represent the original boundary line. It is generally assumed that Hadrian's Wall was primarily a frontier'boundary and only in a secondary sense a defensive work. Two other eaithworks of a somewhat similar character have recently been scheduled. One of these is Offa's Dyke, considered to Lave been thrown up by King Offa of Mercia at the end of the eighth centry to form a boundary between iiis dominions and the Welsh tribes. The otlior is G-rymos Dyke, in Herefordshire, which appears to be a tribal boundary of late prehistoric date —probably the first century B.C.—and to represent a. stage in tho pro-Roman settlement of England by an immigrant race. Although so much has been done by the ancient monuments branch of tho Office of Works a great many material survivals of the past have still to bo scheduled before the lists can bo considered to cover in a systematic way tho wholo of the more important ancient monuments of Great Britain.

BRITAIN'S CUSTOMERS. Some interesting points in an analysis of tho overseas trado of Great Britain havo been made by a correspondent of the Times. Of British exports the Empire now takes 45.5 per cent., compared with tho annual pre-war average of 34.7, but of fully manufactured British exports tho Empire takes at least half. India and China buy goods of about equal value from tho world, but whilo India purchased British goods to tho value of £84,000,000, China, including Hongkong, purchased £21,000,000. Each Canadian citizen is nine times as good a customer of tho United Kingdom as each American citizen. Denmark buys twice as much from tho world as New Zealand, but last year New Zealand bought British goods valued at £19,300,000, whilo Denmark purchased £9,700,000. The imports of Brazil aro greater than those of South Africa, but in 1928 tho Union bought British goods to twice the value that Brazil purchased. British West Africa bought more British goods than Spain and Portugal together, and each Nigerian native buys more British goods than an American, whilo each inhabitant of the Gold Coast buys five times as much from Britain as an American. The Channel Islands bought a larger amount of British goods than the whole of Russia, and so did the Gold Coast and Kenya, while Ceylon bought twice as much as Russia. The 7,500,000 inhabitants of Australia and New Zealand bought British goods to a greater value than the whole of foreign South America or tho whole of Northern and Central foreign America, including tho United States; Indeed, they bought 50 per cent, more than Germany Poland, Austria, Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia put togethor, and more than the combined purchases of France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Portugal.,