of Professor Boyd Dawkins, Sir John Evans, Sir John Lubbock,1 Canon Greenwell, and others.

My subject is confined to one department only of their life their love of ornament whether beautiful or grotesque; the materials of which these ornaments were made; the evidence which these afford of religious ideas in however rudimentary a stage; and the combination of these particular ornaments with weapons, adorned or unadorned, made of slate; and, finally, I shall ask whether the conjunction of slate weapons with ornaments made out of Cannel coal does not afford presumptive evidence that the people who made and used these things, and were at the same time absolutely ignorant of the arts of metallurgy and ceramics, belonged to the Neolithic Age? It will thus be seen that our enquiry, though confined to a single point, covers a somewhat wide range.

2

Now, with the incoming of the Neolithic races, a curious fact is at once noticed, viz., the old art of the Paleolithic people seems to have utterly died out-at any rate, it has disappeared. We find no more drawings. In its place has arisen a new art: that of personal adornment, and the ornamentation of weapon s and tools. In the absence of metals, jet (when found), or Cannel coal (for a like reason), are used for personal adornment, as are also oyster and other shells; and these latter, as well as the weapons and tools, are ornamented with straight lines radiating from a centre, sometimes crossing one another, and often terminating in the same curious cup-and-ring marks as are found on the rocks in many parts of Scotland and other countries. These are all characteristic of the Neolithic Age.

According to the testimony of Dr. Munro, the greatest authority on lake-dwellings in the world, rings, beads and bracelets of jet or Cannel coal are found in the lakedwellings of the Stone Age in Switzerland and other

1 Since the above was written, Sir John Lubbock has become Lord Avebury.

2 One only, a very rude one, of an animal which it is almost impossible to distinguish, is figured from Stone Age pottery (therefore late) in Scandinavia, by Dr. Montelius. It is so rude that the drawings of Paleolithic Man are finished pictures in comparison (Civilization of Sweden in Heathen Times, p. 29). See fig. 6.

parts of Europe; though, as the dwellings were continuously inhabited, and sometimes more than once destroyed by fire, they are frequently found mixed up with the Bronze and Iron Ages, and it is sometimes difficult to tell to what age they actually belong. Still, that the idea of personal adornment occupied a large place in the view of Neolithic man is borne witness to in the following remarks of Dr. Munro :-"Nor were these early settlers insensible to the charms of personal ornament. Shells, both recent and fossilized, coloured pebbles, the teeth of carnivorous animals, ornamented pieces of bone and horn, stone and clay beads, and even roundlets of the human skull, were pierced for suspension, and worn either as pendants or necklaces" (Lake Dwellings of Europe, p. 504).1

In Scandinavia, according to Dr. Montelius, from the abundance of the material along the shores of the Baltic, ornaments of amber were largely used for the same purpose as jet or Cannel coal in other countries. The teeth and bones of animals were also used; and with regard to the ornamentation on these, Dr. Montelius says: "The decorations consist only of straight lines; as yet we find neither spirals, nor other ornaments with curved lines" (Civilization of Sweden in Heathen Times, p. 30).

As regards the ornaments made of amber, or jet, or Cannel coal, according to the locality, it is plain that these materials were used in the absence of any knowledge of the use of metals, as the most appropriate for the purpose, and were often of very beautiful workmanship. As an illustration of the use of similar materials, as a survival long after the introduction of metals, we may refer to the curious so-called "coal-money" found in the Isle of Purbeck, and other parts of Dorsetshire. These consist of circular discs made of Kimmeridge coal; and

1 Ornaments of jet, of various kinds, have been found in barrows in Yorkshire, belonging, if not to the Stone Age itself, at least to the transition between Stone and Bronze, the so-called Copper Age; and an armlet of jet, ornamented with cups and rings, has been found in a barrow in Guernsey. Journal of the British Archæological Association, iii, 344.

through ignorance of the way in which they had been produced, and of their real purposelessness in themselves, they were for long designated by the name above employed, and thought to be some form of ancient money. But it is now known that these were simply the discs left behind after the cutting of circular rings of the Kimmeridge coal by Britons of the Bronze Age, for armlets, anklets, etc.1

Rings of Kimmeridge coal, of various sizes for armlets, anklets, bracelets, etc., have been found in places very far removed from one another, showing the commerce and intercourse that must have been carried on in early ages; and these, while often associated with bronze and even iron, have been also found in situations which, not only from the absence of metal, but also from the condition of the skeletons and the presence of flint implements, prove that they belong to the Stone Age originally, and that their use by the RomanoBritons was, as I have suggested, a survival. E.g. in 1848 a barrow belonging undoubtedly to the Stone Age was opened in this county of Derby, which, as is well known, abounds in barrows, not only of the Stone and Bronze Ages, but also contains many which can only be assigned to interments of the Pagan Saxons. In this barrow, which contained the skeleton of a female in the prime of life, and a child about four years old, there was found, along with rat bones innumerable, and a cow's tooth (an article almost invariably found in the more ancient interments), round the neck of the adult skeleton a necklace of variously-shaped beads and ornaments of Kimmeridge coal and bone, similar to those found in another barrow at Cow Low in 1846. The various pieces numbered 400; 328 very small; 54 larger; and the remaining 18 studs and plates, some of them with punctured devices. Considering that it was fashioned with tools of flint or bone, it is a surprising example of primitive industry (Journal of the British Archæological Association, vii, 216).

1 See a learned Paper, by Mr. John Sydenham, in Journal of the British Archæological Association, vol. i, pp. 325, 347; and cf. iv, 401; and xii, 166-9.

Still keeping to Derbyshire, in 1845, a large flat barrow, called Net Lowe, was opened on Alsop Moor. This is of a later age than the preceding, because in it was found a large brass dagger with thirty rivets, and two pins of brass; but there were also numerous chippings of white flint, and two instruments of the same. There were also rats' bones, fragments of a coarse urn, and horses' teeth. Besides these, there were two ornaments of Kimmeridge coal, of a circular form, and moulded round the edges. There are many other barrows on Alsop Moor, most of them belonging to the Stone Age (Journal of the British Archæological Association, Winchester Congress, 1845, p. 209).

Other examples of the use of Kimmeridge coal have been found in many places. Two sepulchral vases from Warden, in Beds., are in possession of the Cambrian Antiquarian Society; a fragment was discovered at Colchester, and a bracelet from a Roman grave near the same town; a ring has also been met with in a RomanoBritish cemetery near Royston. Mr. Syer-Cuming was of the opinion that all these were the production of the ancient turnery which existed in Portland from a period in all probability anterior to the Roman Conquest, whilst the Durotriges were lords of Dorsetshire (Journal of the British Archæological Association, xii, 168).

In Mr. John Sydenham's Paper (Journal of the British Archæological Association, i, 352), it is also noted that an armlet of precisely similar form and dimensions to those discovered at Durnovaria has been found in Scotland. (He does not mention where.) This bracelet, with other ornaments, was formed of Cannel coal, like those we shall mention presently.1

It may be observed in passing, that jet, Kimmeridge coal, and Cannel coal, are all varieties of the same substance a bituminous shale, of which jet is the hardest, and capable of the greatest finish and polish.

Shells (oyster or other), small stones, and weapons, inscribed with line ornaments (see Dr. Montelius, op. cit.)

1 Dr. Munro figures a very fine ring of Cannel coal, which, with fragments of two others, was found at Barhapple, co. Wigtown, the largest Crannog in Scotland (Lake Dwellings, p. 437).

and with cup-and-ring markings, must also be taken to be of the same age as other ornaments, even those from far distant localities, adorned with lines; and also of the same age as that to which the rocks covered with cupand-ring markings belong, i.e., assuredly the Neolithic. These cup-and-ring markings are found in many parts of the world besides Scotland (on the rock on which the great cathedral at Seville is built; on the steps of the Forum at Rome; on the pedestal of a statue from Athens; in India; and even in the far Pacific, in Easter Island), and they are always associated with people who knew, or know, nothing of the uses of metals; i.e., they belong to the Stone Age. Their purpose remains a mystery. Had they any purpose at all beyond that of mere ornament? Were they a primitive form of writing, and could ideas be conveyed by their means? Miss Maclagan, the latest writer on the subject, relates that in the Himalayas the people use them, even at the present day, for divination. Is this a relic from the past? It is well known that the people of the Stone Age had some dim ideas of religion; their mode of burial and the objects found in their tombs prove this; and much of our fairy mythology and folk-lore, as well as the greater part of the mythology of the gods among the Greeks and Romans, comes down to us from them. In that age of still primitive savagery, gods and men, and beasts and trees, and stones and the heavenly bodies, were all blended together in inextricable confusion all were equally alive, all capable of perpetual kaleidoscopic changes from one to another. The same is true of the present condition of thought of the natives of

In this connection Dr. Montelius makes the following remarks: "Upon the upper surface of the roof-stones of graves belonging to the Stone Age are often seen small, round, sometimes oblong, cup-shaped depressions. These were certainly used for offerings, either to or for the dead (he figures such a stone, which he calls 'sacrificial'). What gives us good ground to suppose that these holes, which are now popularly called 'elf-mills,' were actually intended for offerings, is that even to this present day they are in many places regarded as holy, and offerings secretly made in them" (op. cit., p. 36). Here we have the 'cups' without the rings, and a present-day use similar to that described by Miss Maclagan in Hindostan. See fig. 4, and cf. with fig. 16, Cup-marked Stone from Dullatur, near Stirling."

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