conjecture was, in a certain degree, confirmed by subsequent investigation. The contents of the small urn (fig. 3) having been submitted to the late Mr. Quekett, to whose skill and obliging aid in elucidating questions connected with animal remains archæologists have frequently been indebted, he pointed out half-burnt fragments that might unquestionably be distinguished as portions of the skeleton of a very young infant. He noticed also other fragments considered to be the remains of a young adult, the age presumed, from the occurrence of part of the jaw-bone enclosing one of the "wisdom teeth" not yet cut, to have been about twentyfour years.1

Among the bones and sand one small portion of bronze was found; it seemed to have been a rivet, measuring about an eighth of an inch only in length: this little relic sufficed, however, to prove that some object, of wood, possibly, or of bone, or other perishable material, and compacted with metal, had been either burned or deposited with the remains. On the inner surface of the small urn were noticed filaments, evidently traces of some vegetation; these, on careful examination, Mr. Quekett was enabled to affirm to be the ribs of the leaf of the pteris aquilina, the braken, a kind of fern that abounds near Porth Dafarch. It should appear, therefore, that the urn had been lined with fern-leaves previously to placing within it the burnt relics of the beloved child, whose deposit, as it may be believed, was here brought to light. Another circumstance deserving of attention presented itself in the inquiry. With the portions of

2

It was

1 A bone of a frog and several small land-shells were found with these remains, and also several specimens of the ptinus fur. questioned whether it were possible that insect-life could be thus preserved in long confinement, especially as the ptinus commonly feeds on wood, paper, or leather. It seems, however, certain that these small beetles had long found their way into the urn. The larger fragments of bone were channeled by the slow operations of the little creatures, whose food, in their larva state, the half-burnt remains had supplied. This curious discovery has been more fully related, Archæol. Journ. vol. vi, p. 232.

2 See some more detailed particulars, ibid., p. 233.

human bone appeared fragments, which Mr. Quekett confidently pointed out as those of a small animal; and, although unable positively to identify the kind of creature to which they belonged, he stated his opinion that they probably had been part of a small dog. The occurrence of such remains in this interment is by no means improbable; in several instances that have been recorded by the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare and other writers on British burials, bones of the dog, and also of the horse, cow, goat, and swine, have been brought to light with. or near the human remains. It will be remembered that such usages in Britain are in accordance with the ancient practice of the Gauls, recorded by Cæsar, who states that the funerals of that people were not devoid of costly ceremony; that they threw upon the funereal pile every object, even the animals that the deceased when living had regarded with attachment. "Funera sunt, pro cultu Gallorum, magnifica et sumptuosa; omniaque, quæ vivis cordi fuisse arbitrantur, in ignem ferunt, etiam animalia."

The remains of small mammalia, and, as I believe, of the dog, appear to have repeatedly been foun din early interments, especially in the sister kingdom. Amongst instances that have occurred in the southern parts of England, two may claim special mention. The first was in a barrow, near Everley, Wilts, in which the skeleton of a dog lay apart from the burnt remains of his master; it was placed above them, nearer the surface, but there can be little question that, as Sir Richard C. Hoare remarked, the deceased, whose relics were found surrounded by a wreath of the horns of the red deer, with arrow-heads of flint among the ashes, may have been.

1 Cæs. Comm., lib. vi. c. 19.

2 Catalogue of the Antiquities, Mus. Roy. Irish Acad., by Sir W. R. Wilde, ("Mortuary Urns"), pp. 173, 185. A bone of a dog, as supposed, occurred with human skeletons in the chamber within a barrow in the Phoenix Park, destroyed in 1838. (Ibid., p. 181.) The reader may remember the burial of Cuchullin on the Irish shore. The hero's favourite hound, Luäth, was laid near him. (Ossian, edit. 1773, vol. i, p. 388.)

killed in the chase, and that his faithful attendant was interred over his grave. The second instance is the deposit on Sutton Down, Dorset, where a remarkable barrow was opened by Mr. C. Warne, whose experience in such researches is perhaps unrivalled; he describes the discovery of a mass of ashes and burnt bones with a plain urn having two pierced ears, as often seen in the ancient pottery of Dorset, deposited in a space about four feet in diameter; and immediately under the urn lay a skeleton of a small dog, the teeth still firm in the jaws. Professor Nilsson, in his account of the primitive inhabitants of Scandinavia, states that in Sweden skulls of dogs have occasionally been found with human skeletons in tumuli. The missionary Cranz relates also that many Greenlanders used to lay the head of a dog beside the grave of a child, in order that the soul of the dog, which can always find its way home, might show the helpless child the road to the country of souls.3

It is to be regretted that the precise facts of the discovery at Porth Dafarch, and certain details regarding the condition of the deposits, were not minutely observed, when they were casually disturbed by the labourers in Mr. Roberts' employ; the particulars above given were collected from him, and by careful observation on the

1 Hoare, Ancient Wilts, vol. i, p. 184. See also the notices of barrows opened near Amesbury, pp. 124, 125; and at Wilsford, pp. 208, 216. The skeletons of the dogs were usually found somewhat above the primary deposit.

2 See Mr. Warne's valuable work, The Celtic Tumuli of Dorset, Personal Researches, pp. 29, 30. In a barrow at Way Hagg, on Ayton Moor, Yorkshire, Mr. Tissiman found a large urn with burnt remains, an "incense-cup," arrow-heads, etc.; also bones of some small animal that had been burnt with the corpse. (Journ. Brit. Arch. Ass., vol. vi, p. 2; see also Reliquary, vol. iii, p. 206; Arch. Journ., vol. xiii, p. 101.)

3 Nilsson, Inhabitants of Scandinavia during the Stone Age, translated by Sir John Lubbock, Bart., p. 140. Skulls of dogs have been found in Esquimaux graves. Scoresby relates that he found one "in a small grave, which probably was that of a child." Sir R. Colt Hoare found in a barrow near Amesbury two skeletons of infants deposited in a very singular manner, each having been placed over the head of a cow, which, we might conjecture, had supplied nourishment during the brief term of life.

spot. It is possible that some of the remains, of which, moreover, only a small portion was procured and submitted to scientific examination, had become displaced; and that some of those that had been placed in the larger urn had, in the confusion of opening the mound without any proper care, been mixed with the contents. of the smaller vase. It cannot even be ascertained whether the remains were originally placed in distinct receptacles, respectively; the facts that have been detailed are the result of very careful investigation, and it appears certain that the deposit consisted of the remains of a person in the prime of life, probably a female, and of an infant newly born, or of the tenderest age. It must further be noticed that the interment seems to belong to the period subsequent to the use of bronze.

The question naturally occurs whether the tumulus ought to be regarded as a British burial-place, or whether, situated so close to the shore, which from the earliest times must have been exposed to piratical incursions of the Northmen, and especially to the assaults of ruthless plunderers from the opposite coast of Ireland, the vestiges that have been described may not be assigned to the stranger, to whose aggressions those parts were, even in much later times, frequently a prey. The Irish undoubtedly made sojourns on these coasts, and the tradition is preserved in the names of the adjacent landing place, Porth-y-Gwyddel, and the village of circular dwellings-Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod-the Irishmen's huts, on the flank of the mountain that commands the little harbour. The suggestion has, moreover, been made that certain features of the urn-burials that have been brought to light may be regarded as analogous to such as have been noticed in ancient Irish interments. The smaller urn (fig. 3) wholly covered with zig-zag ornaments is dissimilar in form to those commonly found in England or Wales, and in its fabrication differs greatly

1 See some further observations, Archæol. Journal, vol. vi, p. 236; and Mr. Stanley's memoir on the Cyttiau'r Gwyddelod on Holyhead Mountain. (Ibid., vol. xxiv, p. 123.)

from the large urn within which it was placed; this last bears much general resemblance to the early cinerary vessels found in England and Wales, whilst those obtained in Ireland are far more elaborately decorated with chevrony and other ornament over the greater part of the surface, as shown by examples figured in the Dublin Penny Journal, the Catalogue of the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, and other works. May not this little cup have been brought from Ireland by the pirate chieftain, and the larger urn have been of the ordinary manufacture by the natives of Mona?

1

It has been stated also that in Ireland small urns have occurred, not unfrequently, deposited within those of larger size containing burnt bones and ashes. Sir W. R. Wilde relates a remarkable discovery in the county of Carlow, in 1847. In a small cist were found a large urn of rude fashion filled with fragments of adult human bones, and within it a little vessel, the most elaborate in workmanship hitherto brought to light in the British Isles, enclosing the burned bones of an infant or very young child, thus presenting to us an example of mortuary usages strikingly resembling those noticed in the interment at Porth Dafarch. This little cup, measuring only 2 inches in diameter by 32 inches across the mouth, is described by Sir W. Wilde as resembling a sea-egg or echinus; the bottom is conical, so that the vessel could not stand erect; there is on one side a handle that is tooled over like the surface of the vessel, and projects so slightly that the finger could not be passed through it.

1 Dublin Penny Journal, vol. i, p. 108; Catal. Mus. Roy. Irish Acad., pp. 177, 179; Ulster Journal, vol. ix, p. 112, plates 1, 2; Trans. Kilkenny Arch. Soc., vol. ii, part ii, pp. 295-303; see also the elaborately wrought urn found in a cairn in co. Tyrone, described by Mr. John Bell, Journal Brit. Arch. Assoc., vol. i, p. 243. In the last instance the large inverted urn enclosed a very singular specimen of the "incensecup," fashioned with triangular apertures all round, and measuring only three inches and a half in diameter. A richly decorated Irish urn, in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries, is figured, Proceedings, vol. ii, Second Series, p. 5. A notice of the great discovery of urns on Ballon Hill, co. Carlow, is given Arch. Journ., vol. xi, p. 73.