LM2 THK BRIG ANTES. 



weekly periods. I dare not confidently affirm this. Was this 

 a relique of an early British chief, or of a later Scandinavian 

 warrior ? for such circles have been raised in Scandinavia and 

 the Orkney Islands by the Northmen, and this is a district which 

 the Northmen colonized. A similar circle of stones occurs at 

 Cloughton near Scarborough. 



RATES. 



Under this name it is proposed to notice mounds of greater 

 size than ordinary tumuli, which appear to have a somewhat dif- 

 ferent construction, and a different relation to the old centres of 

 population. These mounds are sometimes wholly artificial, but 

 as frequently some natural feature of the ground has been 

 exaggerated into a dome-shaped mass, as by cutting off the end 

 of a tongue of land. The mound is usually encircled by a ditch 

 at some distance down the slope, and by a more or less conspicuous 

 bank at the outer edge of this ditch, as if formed by the earth 

 thrown out from it. In plain ground the whole mound is sur- 

 rounded by the hollow from which the materials were gathered; 

 but in other cases the slope is continued downward from the 

 bank to the surrounding surface. Other mounds, in which these 

 features are less obvious, seem to have the same relation to the 

 sites of population, and to be neither tumuli nor military posts. 



Such conspicuous heaps of earth are not unfrequent at or near 

 the termination of old villages in Yorkshire. At Lofthouse and 

 Kildale, in the north-eastern district, and at Middleton-one-Row, 

 the rath is placed to the west of the village ; and at the old 

 British village on Danby Moor, it lies to the east. At Kippax 

 it is to the west of the church ; and the same is the case with 

 the greater mound at Barwick in Elmet, which we regard as 

 a fort. At Westow it is on the western side. 



A little south of the village of Acklam is a considerable mound 

 which may probably be put in the same catalogue, but its form 

 is not very distinct. Aldrow, on the hill above Birdsall, is of 

 an uncommon form, at an angle of the double dike, which here 



