37 ft. 7 ins. long, 48 ins. beam. The shell is about 3t ins. thick. It is well made, and uniformly dug out; there are also very evident signs of fire,

the wood is quite charred.

Fig. 9. Very fine specimen of Chopper or "Cleaver".

I have been able to fit its face exactly into indentations in many of the split bones.

Fig. 10. Another Chopper and Hammer combined.

It is impossible to conceive the perfect adaptability of these two instruments to this use, and the feel they have of having been handled, unless one had them

to handle.

Fig. 11.-Two Boars' Tusks, one white and the other perfectly black, like bog oak. of pile-dwellings have been previously found on the shores of the Thames in Southwark by our Associate, Mr. Earle Way, but nothing so complete or positive: merely the remains of what appear to be piles, accompanied by both Palæolithic and Neolithic implements; and (2) the fact that while flint and bone implements have been found, no tool or implement of metal has yet been discovered. In all previously discovered lake-dwellings, e.g., the Glastonbury lake-village, and the lake-dwellings in Switzerland and elsewhere, as is well known, various articles of bronze, such as pins and brooches, and even ornaments of gold, have been found, and for this reason they are assigned to the Bronze Age and later. This one, on the contrary, appears to belong to the Neolithic Age, and is doubly interesting on that account.1 Excavations are still being carried on, and archæologists will eagerly await the account of further discoveries. Since writing the above, we have found an account of the discovery of lake-dwellings at Fermanagh, in Ireland, in the year 1894 (Journal British Archeological Association, xxxvi, 271), bencath 21 ft. of peat, in which it is noted that no bronze or iron was found, but there were some fragments of pottery. These would therefore be of about the same age as our Clydeside crannog.

Discovery of Roman Pavements at Leicester. - The two Roman pavements recently discovered at Leicester are situated in St. Nicholas Street, close to the old church of St. Nicholas, and the fragment of Roman wall known as the Jewry wall. The discovery was made in July last, in the process of digging out the cellars for some shops to be built on the site of houses pulled down. There are two pavements adjacent to one another, the larger and finer a square, the smaller an oblong. Their present level is about 8 ft. (Mr. Valpy says 12 ft.) below that of the street, and is virtually the same as the bottom of the Jewry wall and the magnificent Roman pavement found some years ago, which is 300 or 400 yards away, and which has recently been completely uncovered and arched over by the Great Central Railway.

The surface of the larger piece is very uneven, and in places has been considerably damaged. The border is entirely lost on two sides, and other considerable portions have been destroyed. The pavement was surrounded by large quantities of what appeared to be calcined matter, and it is therefore not improbable that the building above it was burned down, and in its fall was the occasion of the damage to the floor. One large block of stone in particular was found upon a spot where the pavement had been destroyed. This is well shown in the illustration. The broken places have been filled in with cement since the pavement was disclosed.

The colouring of the pavement is extremely rich and of very handsome design. It was originally, apparently, 18 ft. square, the portion that remains measuring 15 ft. each way. It consists of nine octagons (seven of them enclosing circles), surrounded severally and collectively with a rope ornament, the spandrels being filled in with rectangular figures. The border is a design in shell ornament.

The central design consists of a peacock, enclosed in a very beautiful circular guilloche-like border. The bird itself is admirably formed. It is greatly to be deplored that the body is injured; the head, neck, legs and tail remain, and these are of blue tesserae, with the exception of the tail, which is red, dark-brown and yellow, with blue eyes. To east and west of this central octagon (which faces towards the east), that is, above and below it, are a pair of octagonal box ornaments, and to the two sides, north and south, two circular designs which are also similar to one another. The four corner designs, circular within the octagon, are alike in form, but differ in the arrangement of colour, the two to the east being alike, and similarly the two to the

west.

The smaller pavement lies to the west of the larger one, and is continued more towards the south. It is separated from the other by an interval of 4 ft., but a large part of this must have been taken up with the lost border of the larger piece. As the margin of the smaller piece is also defective, it is possible that the two originally joined, or they may have been separated by a wall. The smaller pavement is, however, higher than the larger, the difference being 114 ins. at the highest point, while the southern end falls away to about 6 ins. It is not so uneven as the larger piece, and is much plainer. It is of two parts; the northern two-thirds has a simple diagonal pattern, alternately of gnomons and squares, in white upon a grey ground. This is enclosed in a white rectangular border, having a broader strip of grey outside it, with indications of red still further outside this.

The other southern third of the oblong is of plain grey stones, with red ends, the grey ground being dotted over with clusters of five white tesserae, arranged in the form of a cross. The dimensions of the whole oblong pavement are 19 ft. 6 ins. in length, by 7 ft. at the north end, and 5 ft. 6 ins. at the south. The north part must have been 3 ft.