248 NOTES— ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. 



way out of the ground, and when taken up appearing like so many small tennis 

 balls ; several of these I carefully carried home, one, which was in its greatest 

 perfection, my draughtsman, for the sake of more conveniently drawing, took with 

 him to the ' Spaniard,' (a place of entertainment on the spot), but the fetor 

 arising from it quickly pervaded every part of the house and rendering it intoler- 

 able we were obliged to get rid of it." Something like the above has been our 

 experience at more than on one Fungus meeting. — Ed. 



Queen Boadicea's Tomb. — This mound, on Parliament Hill, Hampstead, 

 so long a spot of interest to London antiquaries, has recently been explored by 

 Mr. C. H, Read, of the British Museum, under the authority and cost of the 

 London County Council. The '' London Standard " of November 7th gave the 

 following preliminary account of the explorations. We understand that Mr. 

 Read is of opinion that the mound is probably a British Tumulus of the 

 Early Bronze period. It is interesting to visitors to Epping Forest, inasmuch 

 as Ambresbury Banks were also commonly associated with Cowper's " British 

 Warrior Queen " in local tradition : — " The exploration which has been in pro- 

 gress during the past eight days at the tumulus in Parliament-hill-fields, known 

 as ' Boadicea's Tomb,' has now been virtually brought to la close. Except the 

 musket bullet, the old Indian coin, and a few scraps of broken china, all found 

 near the surface, nothing has rewarded the labours of the explorers. The second 

 trench, which was cut at right angles to the original trench, was still further 

 dug into yesterday, and several borings were made in other parts of the mound, 

 without, as already stated, any result. Notwithstanding the negative conse- 

 quences of the investigation, it does not follow that the mound has no historical 

 significance. That it is artificial is beyond doubt. It is shapely in outline ; it 

 has the appearance of a perfect barrow, and it is surrounded with a well-defined 

 ditch, from which the loam of which it is formed has been taken. It could be 

 intended neither as a place for a signal beacon, nor as a point of observation 

 in rude times, for it has been constructed on the slope of one of the many un- 

 dulations of that picturesque amphitheatre which is shut in by the lofty and 

 wooded heights of Highgate on the east, the high grounds of Hampstead and 

 its heath on the west, and the ridge of Lord Mansfield's park on the north as a 

 background. Several of the undulations of this amphitheatre — one of them 

 Parliament Hill itself — are much loftier than the site of the mound ; so that, 

 viewed from any of the points named, the tumulus, though upon high ground, 

 seems to lie on the side of a small eminence in the centre of a great basin, 

 and is by no means a conspicuous object in the landscajjc. The very peculiaritj- 

 of the spot on which the mound has been erected naturallj' suggests that it pos- 

 sesses an unquestionable historic character. That it is the tomb of the famous 

 British Queen there is nothing whatever to show. Nobody seems to be able to 

 trace the origin of the legend which connects it with her. The proverbial oldest 

 inhabitants remember it from their boyhood as Queen Boadicea's Tomb ; but old 

 biographers of the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, while they retail a 

 legend which was current in their day to the effect that Stonehenge was erected 

 as a monument to Boadicea, make no reference to the Hampstead myth. Other 

 biographers, writing a century later, quote the same legend about Stonehenge, 

 and keep silence as to Hampstead's claim to her burial place. Many will prob- 

 ably be slow to abandon the claim, and the mound, for want of any other 

 appellation, will probably contin,ue to be called by its legendary title of ' Queen 

 Boadicea's Tomb.' " 



