Literary Notices. 77 



would fix their date independently of the other objects with which 

 they are found. Under these circumstances, we think we are 

 justified in considering that they also belonged to the Roman 

 period, for there must have been a class of the population in a 

 ruder state, and with ruder manufacture, than the high class of 

 Romano-Britons. We hold still that the contents of these caves 

 show that the period at which they were occupied by man was 

 the close of our Roman period, when this country must have 

 been in a state of great confusion, and life must have become 

 almost savage. Perhaps the coins and the more ornamental 

 objects of art may be the remains of plunder. Mr. Ecroyd Smith 

 produces some examples of a class of round fibulae, made of bronze, 

 found in these caves, which he calls " ancient British brooches," 

 and on the .extreme antiquity of which he insists. We have always 

 thought that the style of art of these fibula} is in character debased 

 Roman or Greek — a barbaric st}de, formed on Roman or Greek 

 models — and it seems to us to belong rather to the very beginning of 

 the middle ages than to the prehistoric period. But we would call 

 Mr. Smith's attention to the fastening pins of these fibulae, which are 

 so minutely identical in character with the pins of the Roman 

 fibulae, that we think they are clearly either Roman or imitation of 

 Roman. We cannot leave this volume of the Historic Society's 

 transactions without saying that it contains some excellent papers, 

 and that it is altogether highly creditable to the scientific body which 

 has produced it. 



The opinion of recent antiquaries, that Old Malton, in York- 

 shire, occupies the site of the Roman tow^t op Derventio, seems to 

 be fully confirmed by recent discoveries made at Norton, a parish 

 separated from Old Malton by the river Derwent. These excava- 

 tions have brought to light numerous objects of Roman manufacture 

 which appear to show that a principal cemetery of the Roman town 

 occupied this site. T. W. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



The Garden Oracle and Eloricultural Year-Book, 1867. 

 Edited by Shirley Hibberd, E.R.H.S., Author of " Rustic Adorn- 

 ments for Homes of Taste," " Brambles and Bay Leaves," " Essays 

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 and Editor of the " Gardener's Magazine" and " Moral World." 

 (Groombridge and Sons.) — This is a remarkably useful book, and 

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 cultivation of divers fruits, and the names of sorts best adapted to 

 different situations. Then comes a " Calendar of Garden Work," 

 followed by interesting and valuable notes on the " New Plants of 



