PARISH OF WEAVERTHOKPE. 203 



proof. In cists under cairns, where the air obtains free admission 

 through the interstices of the surrounding stones^ and in cists in 

 sandy soil, where again the conditions favour the admission of air, 

 it is very rare indeed to find any portion of the body left ; although 

 in a few cases one may meet with a fragment or two of the skull 

 or of a femur, or other of the more solid bones, serving to prove 

 that a body had once occupied the cist. Again, as has already 

 been observed, where the bones have been deposited in a deep 

 grave and enveloped with mould in which there is a considerable 

 proportion of vegetable matter, they are usually found much de- 

 cayed ; as also where the body has been interred in wood and laid 

 in a wet place, in consequence of the earthy constituents of the 

 bone being dissolved by the vegetable acid of the decaying wood, 

 brought to act upon them by the percolation of water. I have 

 met with one very curious instance of the change which had taken 

 place in the bones of a human body, enclosed in a split and hollowed 

 oak tree-trunk and buried in swampy ground. Several rude coffins 

 of this description were taken up near Featherstone Castle, North- 

 umberland, and no trace whatever of a body was found in any of 

 them, until at last one occurred in which the bones were left in 

 their original form, but quite soft : while, on drying, as they 

 shrivelled up, they assumed the appearance of old shoe-leather, 

 such as may be picked up off a rubbish-heap. Bones discovered 

 in peat-bogs have often been found in the same condition, the 

 phosphate of lime entirely decomposed, while the gelatinous portion 

 of the bone has been preserved. The skeleton of a roe-deer, found 

 in Thorne Marsh, in the West Riding, and now preserved in the 

 York Museum, is a specimen of bone in the condition referred to. 

 I have observed that buried bones are in the best state of preser- 

 vation when the body has been deposited in a stone cist con- 

 structed below the surface of the ground in strong clayey soil, or 

 where the burial has taken place in a grave sunk in the chalk and 

 filled in again with the material excavated in making it. I must 

 however confess that the explanation just given of the absence of 

 any signs of an interment in the barrow under notice, namely that 

 the bones had gone to decay, is not quite satisfactory, for the nature 

 of the material of the barrow was such that I should have ex- 

 pected to find the bones in good condition ; and indeed the animal 

 bones which were met with in several different parts of the mound 

 were all in an excellent state of preservation, some of them still 

 retaining the gelatinous part of the bone. 



