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THE GEOLOGIST. 



cade ' by so correct an observer as the author of it, I was disposed to think 

 that these might be scattered scales of Glyptolepis lying there. I have 

 looked at them again, and now believe them to be in their original posi- 

 tion, or at least slightly displaced. I am afraid that Holoptychms, unless 

 the other points of difference hold, will have to go down before the kindred 

 Glyptolepis ; but without determining the issue, I have simply sought to 

 place on record what I had observed in the slab dug some years ago from 

 Dura Den. Quantum valeat. Yours truly, 



Hugh Mitchell. 



Craig, May 6th, 1863. 



The Lincolnshire Flats. 



Sis, — A letter, headed " The Antiquity of Man," which appeared in the 

 'Times' newspaper of April 16, 1863, from Mr. J. A. Clarke, of Long 

 Sutton, will, it is to be hoped, direct the attention of geologists to the 

 marsh and fen countries in the east of England. As he happily expresses 

 himself, " these districts interlace archaeology with geology ;" and in 

 confirmation of this, I would offer to you a few remarks upon one small 

 portion of the marsh, on the east coast of Lincolnshire : that portion lies 

 in the parishes of Orby, Addlethorpe, Ingoldmells, Hoggsthorpe, Burgh, 

 and Thorpe. I speak more particularly of the first three parishes, any 

 few observations that I have myself made referring to them, and what I 

 know of the others, being more from hearsay. 



I was a frequent visitor to the seacoast of Lincolnshire in years past, 

 and my attention was called to certain nodules of burnt clay, called by the 

 country people " hand-bricks," because they almost all bear the impression 

 of the human hand, as though they had been grasped by it. Many fan- 

 ciful ideas have been attached to their origin and use ; but very little exa- 

 mination is sufficient to determine that they are the refuse of some manufac- 

 ture of pottery, and have been used as props to support earthenware, and 

 give access and circulation to the flames in the kiln. The like pieces of 

 clay have, as an antiquarian informed me, been found in some of the 

 Channel Islands, and a paper upon them exists in some periodical or trans- 

 actions of some society. The use of these " hand-bricks" being pretty 

 clear, I paid no further attention to them, until the subject of the works 

 of " man primaeval" began to be mooted, when the age of these bricks be- 

 came an interesting question. I thought it worth while to make a few 

 excavations on spots where the bricks were known to exist, and to try 

 what could be learnt further about them. In the autumn of 1861 I made 

 some fourteen or fifteen diggings, commencing under the strongest impres- 

 sion that the nodules were of very remote antiquity. The first excavation 

 confirmed the view I had taken of the use to which they had been applied ; 

 they were surrounded by the debris of pottery, lying in every position, 

 as if fchey had been thrown aside as useless and done with. As I proceeded 

 I found nothing that threw any light upon the age of the hand-bricks, 

 until the workmen, in almost the very last spadeful of the last excavation, 

 threw up the bottom part of a pot, which, much to my disappointment, 

 bore the marks of the wheel, and was clearly apiece of Eoman pottery. 

 The use, then, of these bricks, which may have been settled perhaps 

 without my knowing it. is apparent ; but their age I never heard any one 

 hinl at. They are Roman, and of no greater antiquity than the time of the 

 sojourn of the Romans in Britain. 



The men who dug for me recognized, as they said, the same appearances 



