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June 3. — The Rev. James Raine, Junior, read a paper entitled 

 *' Illustrations of Life and Manners from Wills," especially the class 

 called nuncupative or word-of-mouth wills. In an age when writing 

 materials could not readily be found, such wills were frequently made 

 in cases of emergency. These documents afford much information 

 respecting the times in which the testators lived and the little world 

 of the hearth and the home; they are also characterized by their 

 truthfulness, being made at a moment when they were about to 

 exchange one state of existence for another. Those which were 

 quoted were chiefly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and 

 related to this and the neighbouring county of Durham. One was 

 that of a female of Richmond, who was compelled to make her will 

 out of a chamber window, the house being locked up as its inhabitants 

 were stricken with the dreadful plague. Richmond suffered terribly 

 from this visitation, three-fourths of the population being carried off by 

 it and buried on the north side of the church, where the people, even to 

 the close of the last century, refused to bury for fear of letting out 

 the plague. Archbishop Mountain, who was a native of Cawood, 

 made a nuncupative will in 1628, some of the bequests of which were 

 mentioned. The paper concluded with an observation that literary 

 men, before they undertook to treat of history and biography, would 

 do well to pay attention to these humble but authentic records. 



November 3. — A paper, by Mr. Edward Tindall, of Bridling- 

 ton, was read, containing an account of the opening of some tumuli 

 in that neighbourhood since the beginning of the year. In one of 

 these, three articles of bronze had been found, which the author of the 

 paper considered to be Roman ; in another, flint chisels and other 

 implements of the same material, along with fragments of burnt bone. 

 In another, which was 100 yards in circumference and 100 feet in 

 diameter, two urns of clay were found, which had been made on the 

 wheel and afterwards ornamented by hand ; a broken axe head, finely 

 polished at the edge, and a remarkable implement of flint, combining 

 the uses of a knife and a saw. Pieces of leather were also found, 

 which had been pierced by an instrument like a cordwainer's awl, 

 and seemed to have been worn as an ornamental part of dress by the 

 persons interred. Branches of trees, in a remarkable state of pre- 

 servation, were strewed over the ashes of the dead. In this tumulus 

 both urns and skeletons were found, and one of the urns exhibits a 

 rude imitation of Samian ware, which appears to indicate that the 

 tumulus belonged to the time of the Roman occupation. Several 



