406 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
The gravel mound belongs to the railway company, and is quarried 
from time to time for ballast. In the course of the night of the 3rd 
October 1881, the men who were digging the gravel came upon the 
cist at the depth of about one and a half to two feet from the 
surface. The upper part of the mound is roughish gravel, and below 
the gravel it is sand. The cist was just below the gravel, but in the 
sand. The sides were formed of four large slabs, one of which fell 
down as the workmen removed the sand from below. The length 
of the cist was 3 feet 9 inches, the breadth 2 feet 3 inches, and the 
depth 18 inches at the ends, and 27 inches in the centre. The 
contents were an urn and certain bones. The urn is small, 5J inches 
high and 4J inches diameter at the mouth. It is of graceful shape 
and elaborately carved. 
The other contents of the cist were bones. Surrounding many of 
the bones was a coating apparently vegetable in structure. It was 
said that the bones were wrapped in a piece of bull’s hide, with the 
hair still upon it ; but examination seems to settle that this is only 
another instance of an error that has been common, of mistaking the 
matted mycelium of a cryptogamous plant for hair. In the previously 
discovered cist there was true hair found. 
“ The base of the cist was covered with small pebbles — not so 
uniformly as to form a continuous floor, but quite close enough to 
show that it was not the result of chance, while scattered about 
were fragments of wood charcoal.” Only a very small portion of 
the charcoal was preserved, and doubt having been expressed as to 
whether it was really charcoal, I requested Dr. Jamieson to examine 
it carefully and also to send me a portion of it, both of which 
requests he has kindly complied with. Dr. Jamieson says : — “ It 
is undoubtedly vegetable charcoal. I have examined it microscopi- 
cally. Chemically there is no very decisive test. I send you also 
a sample as you desired, and am sorry that it is so small, but in my 
ignorance of the importance of such a phenomenon as the presence 
of charcoal in a cist* I carried off only two or three little fragments. 
There were no pieces, as far as I can recollect, of any size, most 
being about the size of the specimen sent to you (J-inch by J-inch). 
“ In examining microscopically a piece of the charcoal, I thought 
I had stumbled on a ‘a find. ’ With a high power, seemingly 
embedded in a little fragment of charcoal, were two or three isolated 
