Notes. 641 



(Transcript of the paper sent with it.) 

 In the Year 1746 as Certain Labourers were digging Stones out of 

 a Large Barrow in a Feild belonging to Knowle Farme in the 

 Parish of little Bedwin, & within two Miles of Froxfeild in the 

 County of Wilts, in order to mend the Turnpike Road between 

 Marlbourough & Froxfeild aforesaid ; they struck upon some 

 Potsherds, as they thought, &, breaking them with their Matlocks 

 or Pickaxes, from some of them issued a Black matter like a Jelly 

 w ch . smelt very fragrant of Spices, Herbs, &c, & when they 

 brought it into the Air upon their Spades or Shovels, was in con- 

 tinual motion quivering and Shaking ; they likewise observed Ashes 

 to lay round about the Places where these Pots stood. Their 

 Master, Mr. William Bunce of Froxfeild aforesaid Surveyor of the 

 said Turnpike Road coming to them & observing, these extra- 

 ordinary appearances, charged his men to dig on with Caution, 

 when they came to any more Ashes, <fc to endeavour to take out 

 these Vessels Whole which they did for the future preserving three 

 entire of different sizes & of a Conick Shape with their mouths 

 downward & calcin'd Bones under them. One very Small holding 



Golden Oriole at LaCOCk. Mr. C. H. Talbot, writing from 

 Lacock Abbey on August 7th, 1913, says : — " In the winter or very 

 early in the year, a bird, believed to have been a Golden Oriole, was 

 seen in the shrubbery here. There was probably a pair. My sister, 

 Mrs. Clark, saw it and thought it appeared to be a Golden Oriole, but 

 also thought it hardly possible ; but, after she had returned to Scotland, 

 . she happened to mention the circumstance to my niece, who told her 

 that I also had seen a bird that I thought must be a Golden Oriole, 

 and that she herself had seen a bird of the same size, about that of a 

 thrush, but of a greenish colour, which was probably the hen. My 

 niece and I saw these birds, within, I think, a day -f each other. My 

 sister saw the bird, I think, at a longe 1 intei vp". The bird I saw was 

 bright yellow and both birds were seen at the same spot. 



Great Crested Grebe Nesting in Wilts. Mr. A. D. 



Passmore writes, June 4th, 1914, that a pair of the Great Crested Grebe 

 had just nested and brought off their young successfully, in a locality 

 which it is not advisable to specify further than that it is in North Wilts, 

 for fear of the attentions of those worst enemies of Natural History, 

 the egg collectors, whose selfish destruction of rare speeies stops at 

 nothing. Four instances of the occurrence of this bird in Wilts are 

 recorded in Smith's Birds of Wiltshire, but itiis believed that its nesting 

 has not previously been recorded in the county. 



Erroneous report of the occurrence of the Yellow 

 Shanks (Totanus flavipes) in Wiltshire. In W.A.M. 



xxxv., 508, Mr. E. A. Rawlence, of Salisbury, reported on the authority 

 VOL. XXXVIII.— NO. CXXII. 2 U 



