MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 97 



In one cist — VI.A of our plan (fig. 10) — we found 

 immediately beneath the pavement or floor a hole 

 measuring 12 inches in diameter at the mouth and 

 12 inches in depth, filled with a fine dark soil like that 

 above the floor of the cist, while with this exception all the 

 floor stones rested on the undisturbed surface of the hard 

 yellow mountain soil. This suggested that in this case 

 an urn had been buried in the soil under the floor, and in 

 fact nearly all the pieces of pottery and the flints were 

 found beneath the floor stones. How far this position is 

 due to the cists having been disturbed before, the contents 

 turned over, and the urns broken it is impossible to say. 



Xow we shall norte briefly any special characters of the 

 tritaphs, commencing at the north-east corner (see fig. 10). 

 We label the tritaphs I to VI, and the cists in each A, B, 

 and C — B being in each case the radial one. 



In I. A we found an old worn shell of Littorina littorea, 

 also fragments of pottery which proved on examination to 

 belong to at least 5 different vessels measuring from 9 to 

 12 inches in height and about the same in widest diameter. 

 Other fragments, some evidently belonging to the same 

 urns, lay in the central space between A and C. 



In II. A in its north-west corner were loose pieces of 

 charcoal and some burnt bone fragments, also traces of a 

 black oily substance possibly the result of charred animal 

 matter mixed with earth. We were told that 20 years 

 ago a man named Fargher had dug a perfect urn out of 

 cist C. Xo description or record of it was however kept, 

 and the urn itself has disappeared. We think that it was 

 in or beside this tritaph that in 1882 Mr. F. Swinnerton 

 picked up a small beautifully finished flint arrow head. 



In III.B a small flint scraper was met with, and in C 

 some pieces of pottery belonging to 5 urns and 2 broken 

 knives. The space between this and the next tritaph, an 



