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should be inclined to ascribe tliem to an earlier time than Mr. 

 Waddiugton. A description has just been given of the only 

 explored barrow in the neighbourhood of Burnley, and when they 

 considered the implements which the savage tribes of that period 

 used, they miist look upon these barrows as works of immense 

 labour. At present the barrow in question Avas four feet high, 

 and originally it was probably three times that height. He wrote 

 to Dr. March, of Rochdale, the well-known antiquarian, the other 

 day, asking his opinion upon the I'elative periods under which the 

 various barrows and circles had been erected, and that morning 

 he received the following reply : — "My own opinions are these. 

 The earliest interments known in this country are those of the 

 Neolithic barrows. The dead were not burned. In the barrows 

 of the bronze people, the dead were sometimes burned and the 

 ashes placed in an urn and sometimes buried without incineration 

 in a contracted fashion. In the iron age, the Roman and Roman- 

 British times, incineration was adopted and inhumation in a 

 contracted fashion was abandoned. The Saxon chiefs were 

 usually buried stretched out with their arms about them. I take 

 it that the stone circle with the urn interment and the cist of 

 Hambledon Hill are both of the bronze age, and probably the 

 circle is the older, but that is doubtful. In the bronze age iron 

 had not come in and flint had not gone out, as regards any par- 

 ticular country, not as regards the world at large." Mr. Wilkin- 

 son thought the distinct methods of interment met with in the 

 same barrows, might be accounted for by the supposition that 

 the tribes succeeding those who had built the barrows would 

 regard the earlier places of interment with great superstition, 

 and very probably inter their own dead within the same bairow. 

 A most singular fact in connection with these ancient burial 

 grounds was that the names of these places were of Saxon deriva- 

 tion. In Hell Clough, for instance, the word " hell " was from 

 the pure Saxon, meaning holy, and it was only natural to expect 

 that a great amount of veneration would attach to these places. 

 They had another instance in Stonehenge. People were apt to 

 call all these ancient burial places Celtic as if no race had existed 

 in these islands before the Celts. His opinion was that the cus- 

 tom of burning human bodies was practised here before the Celts 

 arrived. He then went on to speak of the discovery of the urn 

 recently unearthed at Hell Clough. The circle of stones within 

 which it was found had been previously digged. There was a 

 tradition that a chest of gold was concealed somewhere in the 

 locality, and he had been given to iinderstand tliat the person 

 who previously digged within the circle did so for that chest. He 

 (Mr. Wilkinson) commenced to dig at the same place, and when 

 he had got about three feet below the surface came upon a car- 

 bonised mass of charcoal, bones, and human teeth. This would 



