Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/448

426 in a cist surmounted by a small tumulus. In the cist, were the skeletons of an adult and a youth, as well as portions of that of a dog. They were accompanied by two rude urns, several flint arrow-heads, and two flint knives.

The earliest recorded discovery of these objects in England is that which has already been mentioned as having taken place at Tring Grove, Herts, about 1763. In this case, a skeleton was found in sinking a ditch in level ground; between the legs were some flint arrow-heads, and at the feet "some small slender stones, polished, and of a greenish cast; convex on one side, and concave on the other; the larger were four inches long and one broad; the smaller not quite four inches long nor one inch broad, somewhat narrower in the middle, with two holes at both ends"ends." [sic] The interment was accompanied by two urns, and a ring of jet, perforated for suspension at the edge. To judge from the plate and description, the longer of the "slender stones" had not been bored with holes at either end.

An oblong piece of chlorite slate, 5 inches long. 1 inches broad, and 1 inch thick, rounded on one face and hollowed on the other, was found in a gravel-pit at Aldington, Worcestershire. It has four holes through it, one at each corner, just large enough on the rounded face to allow a fine ligament to pass through, and countersunk on the other face. The plate of chlorite slate shown in Fig. 355 is flat, instead of hollowed, and the holes at the corners are countersunk on both faces. It was found in a barrow on Roundway Hill, near Devizes, in front of the breast of a skeleton, between the bones of the left forearm, and had, when found, a small fragment of bronze, possibly the tang of a knife, much corroded, adhering to it. In the same barrow was a