; On a Piece of Perforated Slate ; 109 
predecessors, these people had nevertheless acquired some valuable 
arts, amongst others, as we have already seen, that of working in 
iron: an art which has probably contributed more than any other 
to establish that high position amongst the nations of the earth, 
which Great Britain now enjoys. 
bh 
ON A PIECE OF PERFORATED 
Slate found at Aldington, Corcestershire, 
AND ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE 
Ancient use of Slate Cablets discobered in Parrotes in Wiltshire, 
By the Rey. A. H. Wiynineton Ineram, F.G.S., Hon. Canon. 


‘ Fire HE oblong piece of chlorite slate figured in plate vi., a. b. ¢. 
om Ui 
an inch thick, smoothed on both faces and hollowed on one side, 
a perforated by four holes, countersunk on the concave surface, one 
hole at each corner, on the convex side just large enough to allow 

in its actual size 52 inches long, 1 inches broad, and } of 
a fine ligament to pass through, was taken from a gravel pit situ- 
ated at an elevation of about one hundred feet above the river Avon, 
on the Parks farm, in the hamlet of Aldington in Worcestershire, 
at the bottom of the gravel at the depth of five feet from the top 
i of the soil. The association of one lower and two upper dome- 
#. shaped quernstones with the article in the same pit, though these 
lay a foot nearer the surface, warrant the inference that the locality 
where they were deposited had been occupied in early times by the 
r rude dwellings of some primitive race, the floors of whose habita- 
_ tions were sunk into the gravel, and that from them the piece of 
slate had worked down to the depth at which it was discovered. 
_ The concave form and size of the slate seem to render it a convenient 
appendage to the wrist, and from its adaptability to such a use it 



