TUE KimiERIDaE COAL MONEY. 93 



Hitherto, no vessels composed of Kimmeridge coal have been 

 discovered within the island ; but, it may not be irrelevant to 

 the subject to insert an extract from a paper read by Professor 

 Henslow before the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, in the year 

 1846, on the materials of two sepulchral vessels which were 

 found at Warden, in Bedfordshire. He says, " Upon looking 

 over some fragments of Romano-British pottery from the neigh- 

 bourhood of Colchester, I met with what appears to have been 

 part of a large patera, or at least some vessel with a flat surface 

 and a shallow projecting rim. This fragment is of the same 

 material as the Kimmeridge * Coal Money ;' and bears the im- 

 pression of a fossil ammonite (?) distinctly marked upon its 

 surface. Upon drying, it has become cracked aiid warped, pre- 

 cisely in the same manner as we see the specimens of the * Coal 

 Money.' 



Upon examining Mr. Juskip's collection of Romano-British 

 Antiquities, now in the possession of the Cambridge Antiquarian 

 Society, I perceived that the two remarkable vessels which were 

 found at Warden, in Bedfordshire, (pi. xii,) were composed 

 of a bituminous shale, in all respects similar to that which occurs 

 in the Kimmeridge clay, and from which the 'Coal Money' has 

 been turned. A faint trace of a fossil impression may be seen 

 on the bottom of the more perfect vessel, and towards the siun- 

 mit there is also a sand-gall, or intermixture of sandy material, 

 in the shale ; and probably indicating the direction of the strata. 

 These vessels have been formed out of separate pieces, as though 

 the bed of shale had not been of sufficient thickness to admit of 

 their being turned from a single mass. 



A ring of similar material connected with a bronze ring, which 

 was so clasped into it that the two had the appearance of a link 

 in a chain, were found in this state lying upon the breast of a 

 skeleton, at Littlington, in Cambridgshire. Both these rings 

 would have been considered as armlets, excepting for the above 

 arrangement." 



We now arrive at the third head of our enquiry, namely, 

 whether a superstitious value attached to the * Coal Money' at a 

 subsequent period. It appears probable that such was the case 

 as regards the coal or shale, itself. Pliny * mentions it as pos- 



» Plin. Nat. Hist. Lib. 36. cap. 19. 



