110 . On a Piece of Perforated Slate 
would appear to be not an improbable supposition, that it served 
the purpose of a brace or ‘shield to protect the left arm of the 
wearer against the rap of the string in shooting with the bow, a 
weapon with the use of which the early inhabitants of this island 
were familiar, as we are aware from the flint arrow heads found 
deposited with their sepulchral remains. This opinion which I 
haye formed concerning the part of the body on which the slate 
tablet was worn, is strengthened by observing that on the edges of 
its concave side opposite two of the holes a slight depression is 
visible, apparently caused by the friction of the ligament, whetber 
fibre of bark, or sinew of an animal by which it was attached to 
the arm. As a collateral support of my theory regarding its use, 
may be considered the position in which an oblong flat piece of the 
chlorite slate 4,4 inches in length and 1,5 inches in breadth, similarly 
smoothed, pierced with holes at the corners the same in number, 
but countersunk on both sides, was discovered in a barrow on 
Roundway Hill near Devizes, in front of the breast of a skeleton, 
between the bones of the left fore arm, nearly the situation which it 
would have occupied on the person of the individual when living, 
had it been worn in accordance with my conjecture about the use 
of the hollowed slate as a shooting brace, (vide pl. vil. fig. 2.) 
A flint arrow head deposited in.the same tumulus with this body, 
indicating it to have been that of a person who had been a bowman 
in his life time, seems also to add force to the supposition that the 
plate had been employed for the purpose which I have suggested. 
The adherence however to this plate of a small bronze pin much 
corroded, though not on account of its proximity necessarily con- 
nected with the use of the slate, and the absence of convexity and 
of any depression similar to those opposite to the holes on the 
Worcestershire slate, renders it not at all surprising that its use as a 
wrist shield in shooting with the bow, did not suggest itself to so 
sagacious an antiquary as Mr. Cunnington its discoverenand des- 
criber in the Wiltshire Archeological Magazine, vol. iii., p. 186. He 
doubtless was led to or at least confirmed in his conclusion by the 
opinion of Sir Richard C. Hoare, concerning the use of a somewhat 
similar slate tablet asserted by him in his Ancient Wiltshire to 

