put the relics of the deceased after they had been consumed, by fire.

We can hardly suppose that the persons, whose ashes have been interred in any of these receptacles, were persons of any great note or distinction, because it does not yet appear that the bodies of any brute creatures had been burned with them; for had they been persons of distinguished fortune or fame, such company would not have been wanting here, any more than in other places of the like kind, as particularly in that very remarkable burying place of the ancient Romans lately discovered in digging for gravel on the west side of the lordship of Tichmarsh, at a small distance from the river Nine, where the surface of a large tract of ground appeared much discoloured by the great number of funeral piles, which have been lighted there; here we found the bones of various cattle, as oxen, goats, swine, &c. which had been burned with human bodies, agreeable to the account Virgil has left us of the manner of burning the bodies of the deceased in the Trojan army.

Whole herds of offered bulls about the fire,
And bristled boars, and woolly sheep expire.

En. xi.

In the aforesaid place have been discovered several pieces of Roman coin, which bear the image of different emperors, one whole urn containing a few small bones and ashes, and the fragments of urns without number, several of which were made of red earth, resembling coral, with inscriptions and hieroglyphics upon them.

But leaving these extraordinary relics for the farther remarks of curious beholders, we will proceed to our observations made in and near the turnpike road leading from Tharapston to Market Harborough.

At the opening of a gravel pit on the south side of the said road, in Islip field, were discovered three or four collectious of human bones, thrown into heaps without any order; amongst some of them were found some small bits of Roman

urns,

Betwixt a place called Peter's Cabin, and Twywell Field, was found, on the north side of the said road, an entire human skeleton, with an iron helmet and spear.

In digging materials in a scaly ground the upper end of Twywell Field, near a footway feading to Cranford, were discovered several round holes in the shape of a cone, which

were partly filled up with the same kind of rubbish which had been taken out of them; most of them were about three or four yards diameter near the surface, and near two deep; at the depth of about one foot and a half from the surface of each, appeared a dark mould impregnated with small bits of coals and some bones of hogs and other beasts. From one of these receptacles, (even yet to be seen on the edge of a stone pit in the place abovementioned) we took a small piece of stag's horn, with a fragment of a heathen urn, which plainly shew that these receptacles, like those near Higham Ferrers, were the burying places of the ancient heathens.

In forming the said road on the east side of the parish of Cranford St. John, at the distance of about one furlong, in a scaly ground, we discovered some ashes and bones of a beast consumed, it is supposed, with some human body: near this place was also found a piece of coin, bearing the image of Constantine.

This

We are assured, from sacred and profane history, that it was a general custom to bury human bodies, not within the walls of any city or town, but in fields adjacent; but this custom was not always observed by persons of high rank and fortune, who, according to Servius, buried in their houses. remark was verified a few years ago in digging some rubbish from the floor of a great and ancient dwelling house in the county of Bedford, where the workmen discovered a large heathen urn with bones and ashes, which they put into the hands of the rector of the place.

As to the pieces of money we find scattered among the ashes of the dead, we are much inclined to believe that they were the halfpennies called Naulum Charonis, which the Romans superstitiously put into the mouths of the deceased, for the payment of Charon, the supposed ferryman of hell, who was to carry men's souls in his boat over the Stygian Lake after their decease.

But leaving these things for a while, we will proceed to some other kind of remarks we made in a large gravel pit, lately opened on the south side of Kettering field, where we discovered things of much greater antiquity, and more worthy the notice of all men, than any thing relating to the Romans, who were the invaders of our properties, and the cut-throats of mankind; for here we discovered a tooth, vertebra, and jaw-bone of some animal of an enormous size, and of a species different from any creature that is now bred and supported in our climate; these, with the thigh-bone of a beast of a more moderate size, were found in the

aforesaid gravel pit, at the depth of about seven feet, in places which never before had been opened, the strata lying in their natural order; from whence we infer, that the animals to which these relics did belong, were living before the fountains of the great deep were broken up, when the whole earth and its inhabitants perished by water.

We find nothing remarkable in our progress from this place, till we come to a gravel pit, opened for the benefit of the turnpike, on the north side of the parish of Desborough, where, at the depth of about two feet, were discovered several entire human skeletons, with several amber and glass beads lying near the breast-bones of one of them; as likewise one iron ring, with several brass clasps, which, we suppose, connected the garments in which the deceased had been buried. In the same pit were found two urns, with bones and ashes in them.

In a gravel pit lately opened, near a place called the Hermitage, at the depth of about 14 feet, we found a piece of petrified wood resembling oak, about 10 inches long and 6 wide, the strata also lying in their natural order.

In the gravel pit on the north east side of little Bowden field, near the river Welland, we found several fragments of urns, with four or five pieces of copper coin not legible; as also some little bits of brass of an uncommon form, used, we suppose, about the garments of the deceased.

Many of the aforementioned antiquities are now in the hands of Mr. M. Day, late surveyor of the aforesaid turnpike road.

We have been the more inclined to give this short account of the aforementioned antiquities, discovered in or near the turnpike road leading from Thrapston to Market Harborough, because, we imagine, the like occasion will not again be given for such discoveries in that part of our kingdom.

1757, Jan.

Yours, &c.

A. B.

XXIII. Places in England where Natural Curiosities abound.

IT

MR. URBAN,

may be of use to many of your ingenious readers, who have occasion to travel during the ensuing summer, to be informed where natural curiosities are to be found; I have therefore pointed out some remarkable places where curious

and rare fossils abound; and I doubt not but some who shall examine them will favour the public, by your means, with accounts of their discoveries.

HORDEL Cliff, in the parish of Hordel, in Hampshire, is situated upon the sea coast between Lymington and Christchurch.

This Cliff is in perpendicular height about fifty yards from the sea, at high water mark, and extends about a mile and a half along shore; it is composed chiefly of red gravel, to about 18 or 20 yards below the surface, but amongst the gravel very few shells, or remains of marine bodies are to be dound.

In many parts of this Cliff there are large veins, or rather masses, of a mouldering soft blue clay, through which land springs are continually trickling down, which by degrees loosen the clay, and cause it to slide away in great beds, one below another, and perhaps the frosts may not a little contribute to produce this effect. So that the surface has in a few years been greatly worn away.

When this fall of the Cliff happens, then there is found perhaps the greatest variety both of the turbinated and bivalve shells, that ever were met with in any one place in the world, in their original state, and have suffered no change for innumerable ages past; this so remarkable a circumstance may be daily verified by inspecting the cabinets of

the curious.

Many of these shells are the natural inhabitants of very distant regions, and some of them entirely unknown, either in their natural or fossile state.

Towards the bottom of this cliff there are frequently found large nodules of a hard reddish iron stone, or marble, being no other than an entire mass of shells, with which the church and other edifices are built.

Atherton Cliffs are situated on the back of the Isle of Wight, about five miles from Newport. At the bottom of these cliffs, on the beach, are found, in great abundance, weighty pyritical substances seemingly moulded in varieties of beautiful shells.

Sodbury, in Gloucestershire, distant from Bristol eleven, from Bath fourteen, miles. There is, to appearance, as great a variety of natural bodies, within the compass of four miles round this town, as can be found in any one spot of that extent in England. On the descent of a steep stony hill, about a mile eastward from the town, the banks on each side are full of belemnites of very different kinds, nautilites of the

ribbed sort, and others. At the entrance of the town, a little south of the road, there is a large quarry of hard blue stone, being composed of masses of bivalve shells.

Near Ipswich, in Suffolk, eight miles from the sea, are many large pits of shells, called Graigs in that country, and some large veins of shells, but all found on the sides of hills.

Some pits are thirty feet deep, containing a variety of bivalve and turbinated shells. What is very remarkable of one sort of the last is, that their mouths open to the left hand, whereas most of that species open to the right.

Within these few years past, many thousand loads have been carried off to mend land, to the very great advantage of the husbandmen.

It is not a little surprising, that this mass of shells (called Craig) should be so good to enrich light sandy lands, even those the most barren, that would otherwise produce nothing but heath and moss. But on clay lands it has been often tried, and found of no benefit.

In the Isle of Shepey, in Kent. On the north side of this small tract of land there are cliffs of different strata of clay, to about eighty feet high; they decrease gradually to the westward.

As these cliffs moulder down by frosts and stormy weather, a great variety of extraneous bodies, saturated with pyritical matter, are scattered along the shore; amongst these are found teeth, vertebræ, and other parts of fish, and many entire crabs and other fish of the crustaceous kind, petrified wood, variety of seed vessels; there are nodules also, which, broken, contain within them fair specimens of the Nautilus Crassus Indicus.

I have been informed, that at Faringdon in Berkshire, some remarkable fossils are found in a reddish gravelly bed or soil near that town.

And in a hill, called Catsgrove, near Reading in Berkshire, are found in a bed of natural sea sand, great numbers of oysters entire, which, when exposed to the air, crumble into dust.

1757, Feb.