Frazer—On the Aylesbury-road Sepulchral Mound. 117 
its borders. The first skeleton disinterred was that of a Danish chief- 
tain, with his iron spear and his silver- and gold-mounted iron sword— 
the last was one of the unfortunate victims of a massacre where young 
and old, the unborn child and the mother, the idiot, the lame, men and 
women and young children, indiscriminately perished. I got from 
these ample evidences of brutal murders and of violent deaths, such 
as savages inflict on their victims. 
Judging from the anatomical peculiarities of the bones themselves, 
which I have fully described in my last communication, we might 
reasonably place this massacre at the date when such things are known 
to have occurred, namely, about the time of the Danish Piratical In- 
vasions, and this is corroborated by the discovery of the undoubted 
Danish weapons and of Irish bronze pins and rings, which are referrible 
to about the same period. 
It would not be difficult, from the numerous skulls which I ob- 
tained, to give proofs more than sufficient of brutality and murderous 
violence; yet the last skull that was disinterred will of itself give us 
striking and convincing proof of the truth of this statement. I have 
preserved this specimen in the exact condition in which it was brought 
to me after being dug up out of the ground where it lay. It still has 
the tenacious clay soil adhering to it, and keeping the broken frag- 
ments together, and filling up its cavities. We notice that it must 
have sustained a powerful blow from a club or heavy bar, striking it 
from above, and falling on the nose and upper jaw. The surface of 
the superior maxilla is crushed in, the central incisor teeth driven 
from their sockets, and with them the left lateral incisor teeth also. 
The terrible blow has in addition produced a compound fracture of the 
lower jaw, from direct violence, about an inch to the left of the sym- 
physis of the jaw-bone; and besides this, there are two simple fractures 
situated one at each angle of the jaw-bone respectively: thus we have 
three distinct fractures of the lower jaw resulting from this crushing 
blow. Nor is this the entire extent of the mischief, for the extreme 
violence used has driven the right condyle out altogether from its arti- 
culating surface with the upper jaw-bone, and produced an exaggerated 
dislocation of the jaw upon that side, the articulating head being 
forced below and behind the mastoid process. To accomplish such an 
unusual and excessive amount of displacement must have demanded a 
proportionate application of force; but the appearances of these inju- 
ries thus inflicted are as fresh and well-marked as if they were pro- 
duced within the last few weeks, instead of bearing witness to an act 
of barbarism perpetrated perhaps one thousand years ago. 
The discovery of bronze ornaments of undoubted Irish workman- 
ship with these bones assisted greatly in determining the probable age of 
these depositions, and the few articles of iron, especially the spear, the 
arrow-heads, and the iron rings found round the arms of young persons, 
were all-important. I have much pleasure in showing a second and 
fine example of the bronze pin with ringed looped top, which turned 
up in the soil of the mound and came into my possession. The pin por- 
