AJTOTTJAL MEETING. 331 



level. It seemed to him it had been a field of the dead for many 

 centuries, and he placed it between B.C. 500 andA.D. One grave, 

 five-sided, contained two grown-up skeletons and those of three 

 children. The family might have died in an epidemic and been 

 tumbled in with no properly arranged grave. In another there 

 were the skeletons of four men. Their postures were those of a 

 little boy sitting down in a tub ; as if they had been thrown any- 

 how into a grave not big enough for them. As to the charcoal 

 and flint. He personally superintended the excavation of the 

 graves, and in each they found a piece of charcoal near the head 

 and generally a piece of flint. He went back and dug over a lot 

 of the graves previously explored and found similar pieces still 

 lying in the sand. He might in this connection refer to the 

 Roman Catholic custom of putting a candle into the coffin. Mr. 

 Trevail had pointed out that they had been desecrating this 

 cemetery. The place was acquired for a building site, and had 

 not these societies come forward, the bodies, cists, and everything 

 might have been carried down to the bottom of the field, and they 

 would have heard little or nothing about them ; or if they had 

 been seen, everybody would have been accusing Mr. lago of 

 having neglected a " grave " duty. 



There was much of the field unexplored and many graves 

 seemed to be in position. This was one of the few finds relating 

 to the old British who inhabited the land at the time of the 

 Romans. He believed there was a burial ground at Crantock. 

 Once or twice he had heard, as a boy, of skeletons being found 

 there. He thought an effort should be made to preserve the 

 Harlyn field. Mr. Mallett had no further desire to build upon 

 the land. Few people had the desire to live on a cemetery 

 where, perhaps, two or more hundred people had been buried, 

 even though it was 2,000 years ago. Mr. Mallett was anxious to 

 meet that Institution or any other that would try to preserve the 

 field, and he could not help thinking that meeting should not 

 separate without some effort being made to take steps to secure 

 the preservation of that old Cemetery. If it could be acquired 

 by some pubHc body, and whatever graves there were preserved 

 for posterity, covered in from the elements and from cattle and 

 tourists — who were the greatest source of destruction they had 

 to contend with while excavating — it would be a wise thing 



