472 Report of Meetings for 1881. By Jas. Hardy. 



On clearing out tlie interior, a jar of unburnt clay was found, 

 containing calcined bones and a coin of Severus Alexander. The 

 natural soil was found to have been acted upon by fire to the 

 depth of more than a foot. Mixed with the rubbish was a quan- 

 tity of white ashes. "^ 



Whatever the animal's head represented may be, it is not like 

 that of a boar, and Mr Arkle who saw it when it was first ex- 

 posed thought it was that of a goat. His account of the discovery 

 in a letter to a friend dated from HighCarrick, June 18th, 1850, 

 I shall insert here. He says his principal object in writing it is 

 to describe a piece of antiquity discovered, at the distance of half 

 a mile from Bremenium, close on the southern side of the Eoman 

 road. 



" This is a circular building about seventeen feet in diameter, consisting of 

 a rough layer of stones which forms the foundation, and two courses of ashler 

 work, each about fourteen inches high, and composed of stones from one and 

 a half to two feet long. Each course stands about five inches within the 

 one immediately underneath' it, and as the blocks are of considerable width 

 there is no inside facing. On the south side is sculptured, the head of a goat, 

 the workmanship being of an excellent character. This may be supposed to 

 represent the heathen deity Pan who was generally represented under the 

 semblance of that animal. Within were found two large thin oblong stones, 

 the lower edges resting on a quantity of ashes containing some fragments of 

 calcined bones, and the upper edges meeting together, with a small stone 

 placed at each end. The fragments of an urn and some small pieces of glass 

 were also discovered. 



Mr Coulson thinks that this work is of Celtic origin, an opinion which ap- 

 pears to be entirely unsupported, except so far as a sun baked urn and the absence 

 of mortar in the building tends to corroborate it. 



The Celtic tombs are usually composed of rude blocks, indeed I am not 

 aware that the Britons ever attempted to make any regular erection of hewn 

 stone. Time may have caused the mortar to disappear, and it is easy to con- 

 ceive how the urn of the Britons might find its way into the work of the more 

 moderii people. Certainly the Britons could not be acquainted with the use of 

 glass ; there is no mention of its having been made by the Eomans before the 

 reign of Tiberius, and from the Emperor Nero having in the year 60 given a 

 sum equivalent to £50,000 for two glass cups, we may conclude that glass 

 would be a scarce article even up to the time when the Komans evacuated 

 Britain." 



Mr Arkle also read notices of two other unopened Long-barrows 

 in that neighbourhood of which the sites were pointed out, and 



* I am indebted to Mr J. J. Horsley for these extracts, and also for copies 

 of Dr. Bruce' s figures of objects found at Bremenium, and a drawing of these 

 tombs. Major Thompson has favoured me also with a pen and ink sketch of 

 the tombs. 



