902 



KEPORT — 1892. 



practised, -wliicli locality abounds "with interments of a peculiar kind more or less 

 surrounding a great central mound, serpentine in form, tlie head of which, evidently 

 formerly constructed with a souterrain chamber, has been cut away, and in the 

 cavity a small church erected in its place. The walls of this antique little church 

 are covered with votive tablets of early Christian and Pagan Roman times ; the 

 exhumations from the more lofty curvature of the mound, which exhibited deposi- 

 tions of chronological sequence, in which earlier successive interments of relics 

 and cinerary remains appear always to have been respected by subsequent 

 depositors, as shown from the undisturbed relics of earlier date (now to a great 

 extent in a local museum), which go back through successive stages of varied 

 national occupation from Roman to early Keltic and even less determinable ancient 

 times, the relics of which consist of rude pottery and flint ehippings. Strange 

 rites are still celebrated on the mound and in the surrounding districts by proces- 

 sions with banners and chanting, and the locally surrounding interments are so 

 arranged that the position of the various very ancient tombs, which are small Kist 

 vaens, sometimes only a foot square with cinerary matter covered by single stones 

 of rude and insignificant appearance, are frequently an imitation of the sinuosities 

 of the great mound which contained the successive layers of relics so recovered. 

 The mound appears to a great extent artificial. In his researches in the Pyrenees 

 the author was assisted by two well-known antiquaries, and who certified to the 

 remarkable facts. Almost all the above features have been discovered by the 

 author in certain localities of Somersetshire, Bedfordshire, Argyllshire, and else- 

 •where. When the author read his first paper on such mounds before the British 

 Association in Edinburgh in 1871 he had then made no exhumations from any 

 such mounds. The great mound, to which his first paper referred, is formed of a 

 natural deposit cut into shape, the excised portions being close at hand : it had 

 a chamber in the centre of the head made of large blocks of granite, and contain- 

 ing a great quantity of burnt bones, wood, and hazel-nuts. It appeared not to have 

 been disturbed, and a flint or chalcedony instrument delicately serrated was found. 

 This mound also, as well as one in the locality referred to in Ireland, and that in the 

 Pyrenees, are distinctly serpentine in form. A large surrounding area is occupied 

 by grand cairns varying from ten to sixty feet in diameter ; they are arranged like 

 the chambers of interment in the Pyrenees in a serpentine form, apparently repeating 

 the form of the great mound. The interiors of these cairns also, in each case, 

 contain sepulchral chambers or Kist vaens. 



7. A Contribution to the Ethnology of Jersey. 

 By Andrew Dunlop, M.D., F.G.S. 



The author has examined 239 living persons out of a possible 54,000, choosing 

 invariably those which could be ascertained to be pure descendants of the oldest 

 established families in the island. The following is the result of the investigation 

 as to the colour of eyes and hair in percentages : — 



The author compared his figures with those of Dr. Beddoe, and pointed out 

 that, as he feared many of his ' mixed eyes ' would be considered dark eyes by 

 Dr. Beddoe, and light brown hair as brown hair by Dr. Beddoe, the proportion of 



