It is disappointing to observe the discrepancy between these results. But it is particularly instructive, and a salutary warning to all who attempt scientific enquiries into historical problems, to note that both results are based on sound method. Good method, in short, is not sufficient: the data must also be adequate, and where indeterminate they must, as in this case, be approached, tested and used with the greatest caution. For instance, the absence of bronze tools is not _conclusive_ evidence that the Bronze Age had not begun, and therefore that Stonehenge was earlier than about B.C. 1500, for the stone implements found were sufficient for their work and much more easily obtained than bronze tools. Moreover, the stone implements are stated not to be of the characteristic late Stone Age types, and may therefore have been improvised. 2. THE LOSS OF KING JOHN’S TREASURES IN THE WASH, A.D. 1216 Everyone has read how King John in his last days lost all his baggage train in the waves of the Wash (the great bay or inlet which separates Lincolnshire from Norfolk), and is supposed hardly to have saved his own life. The ordinary histories go on to say that he died soon after of chagrin at the disaster, and that Henry III was crowned in a gold circlet because the Crown had been lost with the rest of John’s treasure. The old chroniclers are vague and avoid detail, and it is the kind of story which lends itself to exaggeration. It seems to have struck Sir William St. John Hope that it might be worth while to investigate closely the exact circumstances, and to consider what was lost, and where. Such a quest might indicate possibilities even of the recovery of the treasure, if the spot could be ascertained, and the brilliant results of his application of scientific method have more than justified his attempt, and afford a really interesting example for imitation. 1. First, the chroniclers’ accounts were noted and compared. Roger of Wendover, Matthew Paris and the Coggeshall chronicler state in varying terms that the King and his army barely escaped, and that the baggage which followed was lost in whirlpools or quicksands in the “Well stream,” which disembogues into the sea through the Wash. These are original authorities, and Sir William observes that the first-named was at the time Prior of Belvoir in Leicestershire, about forty miles only from the scene, and that the priory was of the same (Cistercian) order as that of Swineshead, where the King lodged on the night after the catastrophe, and where he fell ill.