344 Description of a Barrow recently Opened on Overton Hill. 



piece of wood in the form of a knife, and also many shaped flints, 

 but no pottery or ashes, although wood ashes were found on the J 

 ground under the lowest stones of the cairn. 



Amongst the stones forming the cairn were also bones of some \ 

 large animal — probably a horse — and portions of stags' antlers, j 

 These, together with the skull, earthen vessel, and the other things j 

 found in the barrow, have been deposited in the Museum, and the J 

 Secretary has obtained the professional report upon the skull which I 

 is given below. 



The sarsens of which the cairn and outer circle were constructed I 

 were of an entirely different kind to those found on the adjoining 

 downs, and the workmen who cut them considered them exactly! 

 similar to those existing in large numbers by the Ken net t, east of I 

 Overton. As many of the stones were of immense size and several j 

 tons in weight, the work of getting them to the top of this hill — J 

 supposing them to have been taken from the Kennet valley — must I 

 have been one of no slight magnitude. > 



Skull from Barrow on Overton Hill, 

 kindly described by Mr. Robertson, of the Museum, Oxford : — 



" Skull possibly of a stout female, past the middle period of life, j 

 with complete dentition, the teeth much worn with hard food orJ 

 grit. Some of the upper teeth have been lost since the skull was i 

 removed from the barrow. The nasals and part of the nasal surface 

 of the maxillary, the zygomaic process of the right tembual bones 

 have been lost. Also the right condyle of the lower jaw. The 

 incisor teeth are small. The molars, particularly in the upper jaw, 

 much worn, but — as usual in barrow skulls — do not present any; 

 traces of decay. 



" The mastoid processes are small, the palate short and deep, theil 



all of them much broken, was submitted to the anatomical inspection of Mr I 

 Eobertson, at Oxford ; and that gentleman at once and unhesitatingly pronouncecir 

 them to be bones of frogs, This authoritative decision appeared at first somewha 

 staggering, as it seemed impossible to account for so large a collection of the bonei jj 

 of that batrachian on the top of a dry down at a considerable distance from water I 

 but as a matter of fact, during the opening of the adjoining barrow last autumn I 

 live frogs were observed in some numbers in that immediate locality. [Ed.] 



