PARISH OF KILBURN. 341 



taken place within them. Such a practice surely belongs to 

 an age wherein the state of culture must have been much 

 more artificial both in sentiment and habits than any by 

 which we can imagine the people who erected these barrows to have 

 been influenced. And indeed the non-occurrence of any signs of a 

 body is so reasonably accounted for by the total decay of the bones 

 that we need not look for any other or more recondite explana- 

 tion. Amongst the materials of which the mound was formed 

 were many chippings of flint, a flat rubber or polisher of oolitic 

 sandstone, and a square piece of the same stone, 7 in. by 5 in. and 

 over 2 in. thick, which has a circular pit or cup-marking on each 

 face, 2 in. wide and 1 J in. deep. As I found in another of these 

 barrows several other stones similarly marked, I will leave any 

 further account of these enigmatical figures until I come to the 

 description of the barrow in question. 



CXXX. The second barrow was 44 ft. in diameter, 4 ft. high, and 

 was entirely made of sand. At a distance of 4 ft. west of the 

 centre, and about 3 in. above the natural surface, was a very large 

 quantity of charcoal, which extended for more than 4 ft. in a 

 direction north and south. This mass of charcoal consisted to some 

 extent of portions of trunks of oak trees, some of them not 

 thoroughly charred throughout. One of them was above 4 ft. long, 

 and still nearly a foot wide, and 4 in. in thickness. Immediately 

 east of this mass of charcoal the natural surface showed signs of 

 burning, which became more evident towards the centre of the 

 barrow, where in a circular hollow 2 ft. wide and 1 ft. 3 in. deep 

 were the remains of the burnt bones of an adult, probably a man. 

 The body had been burnt on the spot, the wood of the pile having 

 been laid over the top of the previously formed hollow. 



CXXXI. The third barrow was 42 ft. in diameter. It had been 

 very much disturbed in recent times for the sake of the stones which 

 formed it. There was no trace of any interment remaining, but, 

 from the way in which the mound had been turned over, it could 

 scarcely be expected that any undisturbed burial would be met with. 

 On the whole it is probable that the interment in this, as in the 

 first described barrow, had been by inhumation, and that all the 

 bones had disappeared through decay. If a burnt body had ever 

 been interred in the mound, it might have been expected that, not- 

 withstanding the disturbance to which it had been subjected, some 



