Dr. Pearson's Observations 
398 
mysteries of the Druidical religion. If these remarks be true, 
they throw new light on the crooked staff of the augurs, which 
the lituus much resembles. It is accurately represented among 
the trophies which ornament the base of Trajan’s column at 
Rome, erected in memory of his conquest of the Dacians and 
Sarmatians, and covered with bas-reliefs, describing the events 
of that war. The lituus is also found on the reverses of some 
Roman coins: see fig. 2. 
The specimen before us was found in the river Witham, 
near Tattersall ferry, in 1768. It is imperfect, a little of both 
ends being broken off; but notwithstanding these defects it is 
a very valuable relic, as there is little doubt that it is the only 
one known to be in any cabinet at this time in Europe. It has 
been neatly made. The parts which appear like joints are 
pieces which slide over the tube for ornament, or perhaps for 
holding the instrument more conveniently. It had the appear- 
ance of a brazen tube, from which a great part of a blackish 
coating had been rubbed off. It was evidently made of a plate 
of hammered metal of about one-twentieth of an inch thick. 
The juncture of the edges of the metal, the whole length of the 
tube, was preserved by means of a solder clumsily applied, by 
melting it withinside the tube. This solder, which was readily 
melted out by a red hot iron, was ascertained to be merely tin ; 
for it afforded rapidly oxide of tin by applying nitric acid ; the 
cold saturated solution in muriatic acid afforded Cassius' pre- 
cipitate on dropping into it nitro-muriate of gold ; and it af- 
forded no acetite of lead on digesting it in acetous acid. 
The black coating was easily scraped off with a knife, but 
the quantity of it was too small to enable me to determine 
whether it had been applied by art, or was the accidental 
