Three years ago, when I first had the honour of addressing the Society on this occasion, I referred at some length to our urgent need of larger funds for purposes of research and for publishing the results of research; and in the following year I suggested that even quite small bequests or gifts would, if there were enough of them, go far towards meeting our requirements. I am glad therefore to give the first place in my observations to-night to the mention of the very substantial bequest which the Society has received from our late Fellow Mr. Garraway Rice. This bequest, amounting to over £5,420, the income of which may be devoted to research at the discretion of the Council, will enable us to add some £200 a year to our expenditure in this direction. I cannot claim this bequest as a result of my appeal; it had been embodied in a will made long before that date, and is attributable to the enlightened (I might almost say, inspired) action of one of my predecessors in making the testator a Vice-President. We cannot look for many bequests on such a scale as this, since Fellows have for the most part other claims which must take precedence of archaeology; but some might be able to spare small sums (not necessarily to be hoarded as capital) which they could feel would be devoted to the cause to which, as Fellows of the Society, they had vowed themselves, and which would greatly strengthen the hands of those who would come after them. I have some grounds to hope that this suggestion may bear fruit, though I have no wish to expedite its fructification.
Mr. Milne's article in the last volume of the Journal (xxviii. 121 ff.) calls attention to an interesting class of documents, the tablets or ostraka which served as school-books in Graeco-Roman Egypt. The British Museum has recently acquired two unusually good and complete specimens of this class. As they are, to the best of my belief, the most perfect that have yet come to light, it seems worth while to publish them in extenso.The first (now Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 37516) is a single wooden tablet, 1 ft. 4½ in. in length, 5¼ in. high at the left-hand end, and 4¾ in. at the right-hand end. Projecting from the left-hand end is a small knob, nearly an inch in diameter, through which a hole is bored, by which means the tablet could be suspended from a nail in the wall of the school, as in the well-known kylix of Douris at Berlin. The corners at both ends are rounded.
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Last year, on this occasion of our Anniversary Meeting, I was able to begin my address with a reference to the very handsome bequest received by the Society from our Fellow Mr. Garraway Rice. This year I have to report an even larger benefaction, partly immediate and partly in prospect. By the death of Miss May Morris (whose name will always be held in honour among lovers of the beautiful past, for her own sake as well as that of her father), the Society entered into the possession of the legacy of her sister, Miss Jane Morris, amounting to about £8,500. It will also eventually receive, after the termination of a life interest, a bequest of somewhat similar amount from the estate of Miss May Morris herself. The income from these benefactions will be available for the conservation of ancient buildings and monuments, especially of the medieval period, and will greatly increase the power of the Society for good. The fund will also serve as a worthy monument of a family which did much for the appreciation of medieval art, and for the preservation of our historic monuments and the beauties of our countryside.
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