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were made, this circumstance does not excite our surprise ; as 
these primitive people, like the Esquimaux and other northern 
nations of the present day, would depend almost entirely 
upon the produce of the chase, not only for food, but also for 
their simple garments and the materials to sew them together; 
and, although the tanning properties of the peat in which 
they were embedded would, in a great measure, preserve 
such articles for a very considerable period, still, to this there 
would be a limit, after which decomposition or decay would 
annihilate the entire mass — and hence the extreme rarity, 
not only of human remains, but also of the skin or woollen 
garments in which they were clothed. 
Although several articles of primitive apparel have been 
exhumed in the Irish bogs, I am not aware of more than 
three instances where such remains have been found in 
England. It is, therefore, with much pleasure I bring before 
this Society a notice of a pair of primitive shoes and also a 
human skeleton, which were discovered in Yorkshire, and for 
the opportunity of recording these I am indebted to the 
kindness of James Farrer, Esq., of Ingleborough House. 
On the 11th of July, 1846, while some labourers were 
digging peat upon Austwick Common, in the parish of 
Clapham, they discovered the remains of a human skeleton 
beneath four feet of peat, from which six feet had been pre- 
viously removed, and also a pair of shoes; though not in 
close proximity, and, therefore, probably not belonging to 
the same individual. These latter are of tanned leather, and 
of the class which Sir Wm. Wilde calls single-piece shoe 
or buskin, with large flaps or latchets, which were drawn 
together by a strong leather thong passed through loops, 
to close over the instep. The upper leathers of the fronts have 
three gashes or slits, so as to resemble the sandals or shoes 
worn by the Italian peasants. They are of comparatively 
small size, and would be only what a shoemaker of the present 
