Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/88

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE.

eastern counties. Sir Philip Egerton also sent several examples found on his property in Cheshire.

To the series of torcs described in Mr. Birch's paper, may be added one found at Wraxall, which must be considered as presenting a new type. From the cast of it exhibited by the Rev. H. T. Ellacombe, it appears to be wrought with a waved pattern, and to have been originally ornamented with jewels, or vitreous pastes.

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Vases discovered in Furness.

The Rev. John Baldwin transmitted through Mr. Beck, Local Secretary for Lancashire, two small earthen vases of unusual fashion, discovered under a cairn near Roose, a hamlet at the southern point of the peninsula of Furness. No description of the cairn itself has been preserved, but it was evidently a place of sepulture, as the remains of a body which had been burnt on the spot, and small pieces of charcoal, were found in it. One of these vases appeared to present some features of general resemblance to the vessels discovered by Sir Richard Hoare in the barrows in Wiltshire, and considered by him to have been used as thuribula. The other was of ruder fabric and shape, the only ornament on it being a scratched zig-zag or chevron pattern round the upper edge of the vessel. These vases had been placed at the head of the body, which was towards the west, and contained nothing but earth. After cremation, earth to the height of a foot or more had been heaped over the remains, which again was covered with stones to the quantity of between two and three hundred cart loads.

ROMAN PERIOD.

Mr. Tucker, Local Secretary for Devonshire, exhibited six tessons of brick, which were found in digging the foundations of the union workhouse at Colchester in 1837. Mr. Birch observed that these subjects were evidently modern fabrications, and that he had no doubt an ingenious system of deception and forgery was practised in respect of them. It was quite certain they were neither Roman nor medieval; indeed, an inscription or cartouche on one of them was copied from Champollion's Letters from Egypt, published in 1833, before whose time it was unknown. A sword and dagger, with iron blades, and hilts of horn, with Latin inscriptions on them, said