ANCIENT BRITISH URNS. 181 



which their coarse texture will sufficiently evince; they also differ 

 materially in form from those I have found ; but still the favourite 

 zig-zag ornament of the Britons is observable in your urns as well 

 as mine." (Dated, 1826.) 



.Now let me observe that in this quotation there exists the germ 

 of a classification that has never reached the stage of maturity. 

 And it is my wish now to invite particular attention to these 

 striking remarks, and to deduce from them some important con- 

 vsiderations. In his interesting book Mr. Miles gives us six Plates, 

 which contain nineteen figures of urns from this barrow, of which 

 those whose numbers are referred to by Sir Richard Hoare are all 

 of an unusual type, being more or less cylindrical, such a type as he 

 had never but once, as it seems, met with in Wiltshire. This is a 

 remarkable fact in the experience of such a close observer, and 

 must point without doubt to a distinct difference between the 

 sepulchral urns of Wilts and Dorset. These Dorset urns, of 

 cylindrical shape, would seem to denote an earlier style of 

 manufacture than those he had found in Wiltshire. I shall return 

 to these Plates again presently, but at this moment call attention to 

 the fact that the urns numbered 2, 3, 15, 22 are not only cylin- 

 drical, especially so the two last of them, but are also, according 

 to Sir R. Hoare, of coarse texture, and ornamented in a very 

 rude manner with irregular marks or indentations, which may have 

 been made by the workman's finger-nail, or, as No. 2, a band of 

 circular impressions, which may have been made by the ball of his 

 thumb. In Mr. Warne's Plates to his work on " The Celtic Tumuli 

 of Dorset," on Plate 3, Pokeswell, there are figured two urns of this 

 type ; and in Plate 5, Rimbury, there are several of this form with 

 similar rude and simple ornamentation. Now the question naturally 

 arises, whence is it that these primitive forms are found in Dorset, 

 and not 'in the adjoining county 1 The question may admit of a 

 two-fold answer : 1st, that the one county was peopled with an 

 earlier race of people ; 2nd, that the other, if peopled with an 

 equally ancient race, had undergone changes which its neighbour 

 had not experienced. I am disposed to accept the latter explanation. 



