TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. ANTHROPOLOGY. 591 



WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1878. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. On Flint Implements in Egypt and in Midian. By Captain R. F. Burton. 



See' Section E, p. 630. 



Notices of an Expiring Race on the Bhutan Frontier. 

 By T. Durant Beighton. 



3. Report of Excavation of a Bone Gave near Tenby, S. Wales. 

 See Reports, p. 209. 



4. Inscribed Bone Implements. By J. Park Harrison, M.A. 



At the meeting of the British Association at Plymouth last year, I exhibited 

 some marks upon chalk, from the entrances of subterraneous galleries, at Oissbury, 

 near Worthing, made by neolithic flinl^workers for the purpose of obtaining 

 materials for tools and weapons. They were of two kinds : — 



1. Symbols, such as are often seen on ancient coins. 



-ft.6.e:Kfi.A.L 



2, Simpler signs, and straight lines in different combinations. 



U.KH.h.lKX.,/.//.U. 



Both descriptions of marks have been pronounced by eminent palseographists 

 to be Runes, or adaptations of early characters by a semi-barbarous people. 



No sufficient evidence, however, existed that the marks at Cissbury were con- 

 temporaneous with the galleries until March last, when the discovery of a skeleton 

 buried with British rites, and with flint implements only associated with it, some 

 ten feet higher than the entrance of a gallery, over which there were signs of a 

 similar description to some in the second category (believed to be the earliest), 

 removed all doubt respecting their antiquity. 



Search has since been made for runes of early date in France, which has re- 

 sulted in the acquisition of evidence of an inductive kind that brief inscriptions, 

 possibly only charms, but perhaps names and dedications, were in use in very early 

 times in Western Europe. Some twenty examples (all on implements of horn 

 or bone) have been found in various museums, and the collections so opportunely 

 brought together this summer at the Paris Exhibition. 



There are also rune-like incisions on a bone which bears the remarkable outline 

 of a horse, from the upper strata of the Victoria cave at Settle,* which are very 

 similar to marks in the second category at Cissbury.t And it should be mentioned, 



* ' Journ. Anthrop. Inst.' vol. viii. p. 182. 



t I have also very recently heard that Runes have been found on a bone needle 

 co. Kilkenny. 



