found at Aldington, Worcestershire. 111 
« 
have been probably suspended from the neck of a Briton, con- 
sidered that the perforated flat plate found in the barrow on 
Roundway Hill, was worn as a brooch or ornament on the breast. 
The opinion alluded to as perhaps suggesting or confirming this 
idea formed by Mr. Cunnington, was expressed by Sir R. C. Hoare 
__ with reference to a slate perforated with three holes at each end 
and flat on both sides, (vide pl. vii., fig. 8) discovered by the late Mr. 
- Gunnington of Heytesbury, at Sutton Veney, Wilts, under the 
right hand and close to the breast of a skeleton. This situation, 
unless the left hand was also near to the breast, or unless we suppose 
that in his lifetime the man whose body, to which it was contiguous, 
used his right hand in grasping the bow, appears to favour the suppo- 
sition entertained by the eminent antiquary Sir R. C. Hoare with 
regard to the part of the body on which it was worn and to be 
adverse to the theory which I am inclined to adopt, that the pur- 
pose for which all the slate tablets were shaped and perforated, 
and some of them hollowed at the cost of infinite labour was that 
they might be fitted and fastened to the wrist. The great labour 
however bestowed in hollowing the latter kind of tablets, is of 
itself a main argument in support of my view, for surely had they 
been intended to be worn as brooches or suspended from the neck, 
the trouble would not have been taken to render them concave, 
when it would have answered the purpose better to have allowed 
them to continue flat. But to add the weight of another example 
to the one on which my argument chiefly depends, I must now 
allege the discovery at the commencement of this very year 1865, 
with a body and urn ina cist on the farm of Fyrish Evantown, 
__ Inverness, of a piece of slate, the exact counterpart in all but the 
a size, of the one in my possession; hollowed on one side, smoothed 
on both surfaces, perforated with four holes, countersunk only on 
the concave side, and admirably adapted for the use for which I 
have suggested such tablets were employed. This plate is deposited 
in the Edinburgh Museum of Antiquities, and has been submitted 
_ through the courtesy of the curator, Mr. Macculloch to my in- 
-spection. Although it falls short by little less than an inch of the 
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