British Urn found at Macksmill. By J. Hardy. 193 



ordinary size of ancient British, graves : —measuring about 3 feet 

 8 inches in length, and 20 inches in depth, with a corresponding 

 width. The strange thing was that the cist was completely 

 filled with tough marl or boulder clay, quite foreign to the 

 locality, which must have been brought from a distance for 

 the purpose. In clearing away this tough clay from between the. 

 slabs, the bones of a human skeleton were seen embedded in the 

 centre ; but unfortunately on being exposed to the air they 

 crumbled into dust. The teeth, however, were found to be quite 

 fresh, and I brought away a piece of the clay containing two of 

 them, which is still in my possession. A thin layer of black 

 coloured earth extended throughout the entire length of the grave. 

 The cist differed in no way from other Ancient British cists — 

 for such from its dimensions, construction, and position, lying 

 east and west, I concluded it to be — except in the peculiarity of the 

 packing of the body in the boulder clay. Since this discovery 

 was made, however, several other cists have been found in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of the one already described, and 

 resembling it in every particular. The circumstance of bodies 

 being found embedded in soft tough clay seems to me to be well 

 worthy of notice ; and is, so far as I know, confined to those 

 discovered in Coldingham churchyard. It is, besides, another and 

 remarkable instance of the ingenuity evoked by human affection, 

 in its efforts to protect the loved form from the process of decay. 



On a British Urn found at Macksmill, near Gordon, 

 Berwickshire. By James Hardy. 



This elegant Urn, of the drinking cup type, was got about the 

 middle of May 1 885, by Mr Leitch, Gordon, from a sand-pit near 

 Macksmill — a small combined farm and mill on the moor edge, on 

 north side of the Berwickshire Ry. between Greenlaw and Gordon, 

 1£ mile from the latter station. The sand-pit is in a little round hill 

 r]-mile from Macksmill. The hillock has the appearance of having 

 been formed by water, and it was the idea of those who inspected 

 the place that the urn came along with the sand ; but its position 

 might be accounted for by subsidence of the sand after the urn had- 

 been placed in the hillock, as these natural barrow-shaped knolls 

 are precisely adapted to the ideas of primitive people as to the 

 suitable site for a tomb. "Theurnwaa lying on its side," writesMr 



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