326 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 
The Rev. J. T. Fowler recorded the discovery of an Anglo- 
Saxon ring near Driffield, by a ploughman feeling a slight obstruction 
to his ploughshare, it was a fine specimen of the goldsmiths' work, pro- 
bably of the seventh or eighth century. A notice was given by Mr. 
Henry Denny of the discovery of a pair of ancient shoes and a human 
skeleton, in a pit on Austwick Common, near Clapham. The skeleton 
occurred at a depth of about ten feet from the original surface, and 
near it was the pair of shoes, though not connected with it. This is 
stated to have been the only record of a human body being found in 
peat in Yorkshire, the description of which is followed by a learned 
disquisition on the pair of shoes found with it, and old shoes in general. 
This was followed by an interesting paper on the Runic monu- 
ments of Xorthumbria, by the Rev. Daniel Henry Haigh, of Erding- 
ton. The runes are a system of wi-iting which the Jutes, Angles, 
and Saxons brought with them to England in the fifth century, a 
system which they had preserved from times of remote antiquity, 
quite distinct from the old Semitic alphabet, the parent of the alpha- 
bets of Greece and Italy. The origin of the system is unknown, 
and only exists engraved on tombs or stone monuments of other kinds. 
There are probably a larger number of runic inscriptions in Xorth- 
umbria than in all England besides, and of several of them the author 
gave a description. 
