ON THE INTERMENTS OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 53 



in the tenderer feelings of the human mind by heaping 

 up such memorials of the deceased, as records of their 

 qualities and virtues. Such investigations as we have 

 alluded to have been extended over many of the countries 

 of Europe, and even further, besides the British Islands. 

 These inquiries have been undertaken with much care by 

 some few observers, and pursued in an enlightened spirit 

 of investigation, with the mind imbued with all the 

 necessary preliminary knowledge. Hence results of the 

 greatest importance and interest have ensued, and the in- 

 vestigations have now been sufficiently numerous, and have 

 been so well considered, that conclusions of the greatest 

 value may be regarded to have become well established. 

 It may be well to glance at the chief features of these 

 investigations of barrow diggers, and then to dwell upon 

 two or three of the leading principles which have led to 

 valuable results. 



Two different modes of interment prevailed in ancient 

 times among many races of people that of burning the 

 body, or cremation, then often gathering the ashes in an 

 urn ; and that of simple burial in various forms. Both 

 these modes of disposing of the dead were practised by 

 our remote ancestors, as well as by other peoples of an- 

 tiquity, as the Ancient Greeks, for Homer describes both, 

 the former, or cremation, in the cases of Patroclus and 

 Hector, and others. It has often been a question whether 

 the one mode or the other was first practised, but there 

 does not appear to be any reason to doubt that both 

 modes of interment were contemporaneously used from the 

 earliest times. 



Amongst all primitive peoples it was a practice to inter 

 with the dead different objects. These have been very 



