MORTIMER ; OBSERVATIONS ON CONTENTS OF HOWE TUMULUS. 243 
in the hands of a specialist, comparatively useless. Yet I possess 
nearly two cart loads of these crania and other portions of the human 
skeleton (properly labelled and stored away) which have been collected 
at various periods from British barrows during the last 25 years. 
I have hitherto during all these years sought in vain for the 
assistance of an expert to describe these bones. Dr. Garson being 
the first and only one from whom I have been favoured with any 
reply to my enquiries since the death of Dr. Barnard Davis. Never- 
theless, I have continued to collect the crania and such long bones as 
were thought suitable for description, believing the time would arrive 
when they would be of greater interest. 
From a more recent examination made of no less than forty of 
the cremated deposits (now in my possession) obtained from Howe 
Hill, I found them to consist of about twenty- five per cent, of infants 
and young children, and about sixty-five per cent, whose ages appeared 
to range from boyhood to manhood ; whilst there did not seem to 
be more than ten to fifteen per cent, assignable to very old persons 
judging from the closed sutures observed in the fragments of the 
skulls. 
It is difficult to avoid speculating as to the meaning of such a 
large number being met with in the mound. Why were they burnt 
and dispersed in the manner and in such abundance as that in which 
we found them ? Were they the remains of slaves or servants, who, 
with their families, (as they were evidently of all ages) had been 
sacrificed and interred during the raising of the mound ? 
The absence of any cinerary urn, food vase, or flint instruments 
with these cremated deposits is significant, and would seem to imply 
that very little respect or care was bestowed on their disposal. They 
appear to have been placed merely in small heaps, occasionally com- 
prising more than one body, as the mound was being raised. If these 
deposits were not the remains of cremated attendants they may have 
been those of prisoners taken during a war with some hostile clan. 
The disjointed and fractured bones found during the excavations 
most probably represented the animals that were slaughtered and 
eaten by the builders of this mound. Their presence in this instance 
can scarcely be otherwise accounted for. The bones of the fox having 
B 
