June 3. — The Rev. James Raine, Junior, read a paper entitled 
“ Illustrations of Life and Manners from Wills,” especially the class 
called nuncupative or word-of-mouth wills. In an age when writing 
materials could not readily be found, such wills were frequently made 
in cases of emergency. These documents afford much information 
respecting the times in which the testators lived and the little world 
of the hearth and the home; they are also characterized by their 
truthfulness, being made at a moment when they were about to 
exchange one state of existence for another. Those which were 
quoted were chiefly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and 
related to this and the neighbouring county of Durham. One was 
that of a female of Richmond, who was compelled to make her will 
out of a chamber window, the house being locked up as its inhabitants 
were stricken with the dreadful plague. Richmond suffered terribly 
from this visitation, three-fourths of the population being carried off by 
it and buried on the north side of the church, where the people, even to 
the close of the last century, refused to bury for fear of letting out 
the plague. Archbishop Mountain, who was a native of Cawood, 
made a nuncupative will in 1628, some of the bequests of which were 
mentioned. The paper concluded with an observation that literary 
men, before they undertook to treat of history and biography, would 
do well to pay attention to these humble but authentic records. 
November 3. — 'A paper, by Mr. Edward Tindall, of Bridling¬ 
ton, was read, containing an account of the opening of some tumuli 
iu that neighbourhood since the beginning of the year. In one of 
these, three articles of bronze had been found, which the author of the 
paper considered to be Roman ; in another, flint chisels and other 
implements of the same material, along with fragments of burnt bone. 
In another, which was 100 yards in circumference and 100 feet in 
diameter, two urns of clay were found, which had been made on the 
wheel and afterwards ornamented by hand; a broken axe head, finely 
polished at the edge, and a remarkable implement of flint, combining 
the uses of a knife and a saw. Pieces of leather were also found, 
which had been pierced by an instrument like a cordwainer’s awl, 
and seemed to have been worn as an ornamental part of dress by the 
persons interred. Branches of trees, in a remarkable state of pre¬ 
servation, were strewed over the ashes of the dead. In this tumulus 
both urns and skeletons were found, and one of the urns exhibits a 
rude imitation of Samian ware, which appears to indicate that the 
tumulus belonged to the time of the Roman occupation. Several 
