MR. A. O. CURLE'S excavations on a prehistoric township at Sumburgh Ness, Shetland, on behalf of the Office of Works, an account of which appeared in the Times of September 16, convey a remarkable impression of a community which endured for a considerable period of time, remote and self-contained, but busily engaged in pastoral and industrial pursuits, and living a life, for the times, by no means squalid in its surroundings. One of the most interesting features revealed in the excavations of the season which has closed recently was the series of five elliptical chambers in the earliest of the three periods of occupation of the circular construction adjacent to the dwelling examined in a previous season. These chambers were constructed against the interior wall and opened on to a central area in which was a hearth. Some at least of these chambers had been used as workshops or storehouses. From one were taken more than forty rude stone tools of the type peculiar to Shetland, while around the hearth lay various fragments of clay moulds for making swords. As these were unused, this was evidently a place of manufacture. In the following layer of occupation, moulds for both swords and axes were found, one being a section 10 in. long, of a complete mould, still unused. The neatly paved stone or clay floors in the earlier phase of occupation, and the two boxes of slate slab in one of the chambers, nearly filled with broken bones, suggest an instinct for tidiness which is as pleasing as it is unexpected. The earliest occupation is bronze age—evidence of Hallstadt influence appears in the pottery of the second phase of occupation—and a small piece of iron slag in the third level indicates the entry of the settlement into the iron age.