THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
29 
Again, with regard to the position of the unburnt body. Burial 
in the contracted form is almost invariable. There were only four 
interments at length out of 301 unburnt burials in the Yorkshire 
Wolds. 1 Mr. Bateman found none in Derbyshire. 2 Yet in Dorset, 
according to Mr. Warne r the extended position prevails. 3 All this 
is not without cause. 
It is not amiss to observe that the body in the Wolds was 
generally placed to face the sun ; 4 so the secondary interments in 
barrows are generally to the south and east. 5 In the Land's End 
district there is an apparent association with the setting sun, shown 
on the other side of the globe by the Australian aborigines at the 
present day. The Neolithic long-barrow tradition of sun-worship 
is indicated by the high places nearest heaven on which the tumuli 
were piled, and the position of the body in its resting-place was 
continued by the bronze users under cremation — originally a 
dedication or offering to the sun through fire as his representative 
— and survives to the present day in the east and west position of 
our churches and churchyard interments. And so the chambered 
barrow, originally a literal "house of the dead," has passed 
through the stages of the cromlech and kist-vaen, until it is 
feebly represented by the wooden coffin j while the contracted 
interment, the corpse lying on its side with knees drawn up, the 
head perchance resting upon the hand or arm, forecasts in touching 
symbolism the thought of Shakspere — 
" We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 
A careful examination of the Barrow Eecords for Devon 6 shows 
that the immense majority of the interments therein are by 
cremation, and that we can furnish examples of every variety of 
interment associated with the Bronze Age, thus indicating the con- 
tinued occupation of the West by a bronze-using people over a 
very long period of time. How far back this may extend we 
cannot say, but there is good reason to believe that barrow inter- 
ment continued down to post-Eoman times. Eoman coins are said 
1 British Barrows, p. 22. 2 Ten Years' Diggings. 
3 Celtic Tumuli of Dorset. 4 Brit. Bar. p. 26. 5 Ibid. p. 13. 
e They are all collected, with the exception of those referring to Dartmoor, 
in the Trans. Devon. Assoc. The Dartmoor series is intended to appear in 
the next report of the Barrow Committee of that Society. 
