Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/267

Rh THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 187 contemporaneous with the interment ; yet, singular as it may appear, Mr. Quekett, on examining a portion of the skull, with ashes adhering to it, and of the fore-arm and the animal bones, said, that neither had been burnt. From the fore-arm bone, and before he was aware of the measure- ment of the skeleton in situ, he judged the height of the deceased to have been about 6 feet 7 inches ; which agrees remarkably with the measure- ment already given, which was made from the top of the skull to the ankle- joint only. He guessed the age to have been between forty and fifty years. The animal bones were those of sheep and deer. " In writing hereafter more fully on this subject (Mr. Ffoulkes observed), I shall show, that, on comparing the structure of this tumulus, and the mode of interment, with various passages of Llywarch Flen's Poems, there is much that is worthy of attention. For the present, pursuing the subject from what I have already premised, such being the nature of our dis- coveries, the structure of the tumulus and the mode of interment atford a presumption that the tumulus belongs to a comparatively late period ; hence it would be no inconsistency to suppose that the warrior entombed beneath it fell about the middle of the sixth century. Then, turning to Welsh history, we find dates which prove that Gwen must have fallen before the year a.d. 546 — (for Llywarch Hen, his father, who outlived all his sons, died in that year) — and probably subsequent to the year a.d. 530; and, taking into consideration the historic fact that Gwen fell at the Ford of the Morlas, the position of this tumulus Avithin 150 yards of that river, the name of the neighbouring farm " Tyn-y-rhyd," the probability that Gwen would be buried near to where he fell, the coincidence between the dates ascertained from history and the evidence of time derived from the character both of these discoveries and of the tumulus itself, the fact that no other tumulus of similar character exists on the banks of the river Morlas, the local name of the site of the tumulus, " Gorsedd Wen," and its asso- ciations, surely there appears ground for believing that this tumulus is the tomb of Gwen, the son of Llywarch Hen." This tumulus, and its claims to be the tomb of Gwen, will be more fully discussed in the September Number of the Archa3ologia Cambrensis. Mr. Winston exhibited a series of specimens of ancient ruby glass, from the commencement of the thirteenth to the end of the sixteenth century ; also several pieces of modern ruby glass ; and drawings of sections of the glass as seen through a microscope. The result of Mr. Winston's observations was, that the manufacture of all the ancient ruby glass was substantially the same ; that the colouring matter was principally oxide of copper, as stated in the " Mappa; Clavicula," by Eraclius de Artibus Romanorum, and other writers ; and that the glass was blown ; but that, in course of time, the manufacture varied somewhat in its method. That the greatest change took place about 1380, after which time the glass was almost always smoothly coloured, whereas pre- viously its colour was in general streaky and uneven. That tbis chan"-c in the manufacture took place precisely at the period when glass paintini-s were becoming less mosaic and more pictorial in character. That it was impossible not to be struck with the coincidence, or to suppose that it was accidental. A minute examination of certain pieces of modern rubv glass, which, by reason of an accident in the manufacture, exhibited the colour streaky and uneven, somewhat after the manner of the ruby glass previously to 1380, had convinced Mr. Winston of the substantial idcntitv