memoration of the Fiftieth Year of Her Majesty's Reign. Lancaster, T. Storey, Mayor, 21 June, 1887." This year another special medal has been designed by Mr. Pinches. The obverse is as before, with a slightly older head of the Queen. The reverse has a representation of the town hall, the arms as before, and an inscription: "In Commemoration of the Sixtieth Year of Her Majesty's Reign, N. W. Helme, Mayor, 22 June 1897."

In the attics of the Town Clerk's office are preserved several relics of some interest. Here may be seen the ancient stocks of the town, and a most interesting series of ale and spirit measures, which it is hoped will some day find a fitting home in a local museum. They are said to have been made from guns captured from the Spanish Armada.

The runic cross, once in Lancaster, and now preserved in the British Museum (see a full description by the late John Mitchell Kemble, F.S.A., in vol. xxix of Archæologia) is well known to antiquaries, as are also the stones at Halton and Heysham, described by Mr. Romilly Allen in the Arch. Journal, vol. 42, p. 328, and perhaps even more fully by Mr. J. Holme Nicholson and the Rev. Thomas Lees in the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, vol. ix. There are, however, three small pieces of similar carving noticed by Mr. Roper, and built into the north and west walls of the parish church of St. Mary at Lancaster. One of these has rather the appearance of Roman work. It is to be hoped that they may some day be taken out and placed in the local museum.

A large collection of antiquities found some years ago in Lancaster, including a Roman altar, much Samian pottery and other things, described by the late Mr. Thompson-Watkin in his Roman Lancashire, were removed by their then owner (Mr. Dalzell) to his new home at Workington. There is, however, now a great probability that all these, thanks to the energy of Mr. Roper and Councillor Satterthwaite, will be restored to the temporary museum in the Storey Institute.

There are a very large number of ancient dated doorheads about Lancaster, some of them with very curious designs, one having a fish and others other emblems.

On Easter Monday, in company with Councillor Satterthwaite, I visited Cartmel and the district. We first inspected Cark Hall, which has been in the Fletcher Rigge family from the time of Queen Elizabeth. It is an old mansion, and has some most interesting carving over the front door, and contains an old oak bedstead dated 1610. From here we went to Holker Hall, formerly the residence of the late Duke of Devonshire, but now occupied by Victor Cavendish, Esq., M.P. Though beautifully situated in a richly-wooded park, the house is of little or no antiquarian interest. Hence we proceeded to the fine priory church of Cartmel, so fully described from its architectural side by the late Rev. J. L. Petit in vol. 27 of the Arch. Journal. Most interesting and beautiful is this grand old church, but to me the object was to see the fine misereres and woodwork, and to describe them for you to the best of my ability. Their position and details will perhaps be best understood from the following rough diagram:

I took careful measurements on the following basis, as suggested by Mr. T. A. Martin, who has so long been interested in this question:—

(a) Elbow to elbow, 31 ins.

(b) Height of seat, 17 ins.

(e) Total height from ground when turned up, 26 ins. (d) Depth of seat front to back, 14 ins.

Depth of bracket, 5 ins.

(f) Width of seat, 27 ins.

DETAILS.

1. Centre, floral scroll, supporters floral.

2. Centre, grotesque mask, supporters floral.

3. Centre, two birds feeding from a basket, supporters floral. 4. Centre, bird with two bunches of grapes in bill, supporters floral.

5. Centre, fowl frontface, supporters, left floral, right devil. 6. Centre, wyvern sideways, supporters floral.

7. Centre, devil with crown and sceptre, supporters floral. 8. Centre, mermaid with double comb and circular glass, supporters, left floral, right curled fish.

9. Centre, monkey with jug in left hand held aloft, and something in right hand, supporters left wyvern, right floral.

10. Centre, angel with book, supporters floral.

11. Centre, pelican in her piety, supporters floral.

12. Centre, triple head emblematical of Trinity, supporters floral. 13. Centre, floral with grapes, supporters W. W. under crown. 14. Centre, horse in a wood, supporters floral.

15. Centre, floral; supporters left floral, right grotesque head. 16. Centre grotesque, supporters floral.

17. Fixed, nothing under.

18. Centre, wyvern to left, supporters grotesques.

19. Centre, fullface mask; supporters, left floral, right mask. 20. Centre, Tudor rose; support, left bull's head, right apple fruit. 21. Centre, dogs hunting stag; supporters, left W. W. under crown, right hedgehog.

22. Centre, floral; supporters, left floral, right grotesque.

23. Centre, elephant and castle; supporters, left floral, right grotesque.

24. Centre, ivy leaves, supporters floral

25. Centre, grotesque animal; supporters, left rose, right mask. 26. Centre floral, supporters floral.

The woodwork over the stalls is also of great interest, emblems being shown of the Passion and other details. It is more modern than the stalls themselves. Three of the stalls, Nos. 8, 12, and 23, are very fine, and of special interest. No. 8 is treated in a somewhat different way on the misereres at Chester Cathedral, Worcester

Cathedral, and Malpas Church, Cheshire.

No. 12, I believe to be quite unique; the same idea is found in encaustic tiles in other churches. No. 23 is the elephant and castle found in its crudest form on our earliest English misereres in Exeter Cathedral, and also at Chester. W. W. on the prior's stall is the monogram of William de Walton, one of the early priors.

There are many matters of interest in this church. The famous Harrington monument has received able but perhaps not final treatment, at the hands of Mr. W. O. Roper, F.S.A., in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. The quaint umbrella formerly held over the officiating clergymen at funerals, the monument with the impossible date, the beautiful recumbent effigy of Lord Frederick Cavendish, with his hand as mutilated by his murderers in Phoenix Park, and strikingly reproduced by Woolner, are all of interest.

There is in the vestry a most excellent old library of about 294 volumes, given by one Thomas Preston in 1696. The books are fully described by Chancellor Christie in his Old Church and School Libraries of Lancashire, published by the Chetham Society. In this church was also preserved, within the memory of man, a moveable pew, which could be taken about the church on wheels at the wish of its owners.

It is perhaps worth while to state that an ancient boat has been discovered in 1896, buried in peat, some three miles outside Lancaster at Blea Tarn, in constructing the new Blea Tarn Reservoir of the Corporation. It has been carefully preserved by the Water Engineer, Mr. John Cook, C.E.1

1 Since this paper was written, a further curious discovery has been made at Blea Tarn. Buried beneath the peat were found the remains of George Postlethwaite, lost from Lancaster over forty years ago; his joiner's rule and watch and boots in good preservation.-T. C. II.

ON SOME PRIMITIVE ORNAMENTATION FOUND ON PREHISTORIC POTTERY.

BY B. WINSTONE, ESQ., M.D.

(Read 7th April 1897.)

HE exhibits of earthenware on the table are from burial mounds in Canada. They may be received as genuine fragments of ancient American pottery, as they were given by Mr. David Boyle, the curator of the museum in Toronto, to my daughter and a friend when visiting the museum. The pieces are very small, and are no doubt surplus finds, of no value to the museum. But they have on them markings by way of ornament, which are of interest when compared with the ornamentation of pottery found in similar burial mounds in Europe.

I have no intention of entering into the question as to how America became inhabited, as a paper was read on the subject by Mr. Fryer at the meeting of our Society held on November 4 of last year, and printed in the Association's Journal. I may, however, mention that there is among anthropologists the belief that the eastern or Atlantic side of America was peopled by emigrants from the north of Europe; and that, in the opinion of geologists, there was at one time, extending into the post-glacial period, much more land in the North Atlantic Ocean than at present.

It is supposed there was land connecting the Old and New World, America, during the Palæolithic Age, affording an overland route between Europe and America.

That America was inhabited at a very early period, before the mastodon or mammoth became an extinct