344 Description of a Barrow recently Opened on Overton Hill. 



piece of wood in the form of a knife, and also many shaped flints, 

 but no pottery or ashes, although wood ashes were found on the 

 ground under the lowest stones of the cairn. 



Amongst the stones forming the cairn were also bones of some 

 large animal — probably a horse — and portions of stags' antlers. 

 These, together with the skull, earthen vessel, and the other things 

 found in the barrow, have been deposited in the Museum, and the 

 Secretary has obtained the professional report upon the skull which 

 is given below. 



The sarsens of which the cairn and outer circle were constructed 

 were of an entirely different kind to those found on the adjoining 

 downs, and the workmen who cut them considered them exactly 

 similar to those existing in large numbers by the Kennett, east of 

 Overton. As many of the stones were of immense size and several 

 tons in weight, the work of getting them to the top of this hill — 

 supposing them to have been taken from the Kennet valley — must 

 have been one of no slight mao'uitude. 



Skull from Barrow on Overton Hill, 

 kindly described by Mr. Robertson, of the Museum, Oxford : — 



" Skull possibly of a stout female, past the middle period of life, 

 with complete dentition, the teeth much worn with hard food or 

 grit. Some of the upper teeth have been lost since the skull was 

 removed from the barrow. The nasals and part of the nasal surface 

 of the maxillary, the zygomaic process of the right tembual bones 

 have been lost. Also the right condyle of the lower jaw. The 

 incisor teeth are small. The molars, particularly in the upper jaw, 

 much worn, but — as usual in barrow skulls — do not present any 

 traces of decay. 



" The mastoid processes are small, the palate short and deep, the 



all of them much broken, was submitted to the anatomical inspection of Mr. 

 Robertson, at Oxford ; and that gentleman at once and unhesitatingly pronounced 

 them to be bones of frogs. This authoritative decision appeared at first somewhat 

 staggering, as it seemed impossible to account for so large a collection of the bones 

 of that batrachian on the top of a dry down at a considerable distance from water : 

 but as a matter of fact, during the opening of the adjoining barrow last autumn, 

 live frogs were obseiTed in some numbers in that immediate locality. [Ed.] 



