of which yielded such interesting results. How the ." tumulus" or "memorial" of Alric could have been a "fortified post made use of in the engagement when he was slain" is, to say the least, not quite clear. Having resolved to prove what this mound really was, I began on September 25th, 1894, to make a cutting into it, from the side to beyond the centre, ten feet wide, and to be continued down to the field level if necessary. This was made from the south-east corner, though I wished to go in from the east end, on the chance of its being a long barrow; but I was unwilling to sacrifice two of the old thorns which grow there. Light brown clay lay to a depth of three feet below the top and in from the side, in which were found near the centre about two feet below the turf a George III. penny and halfpenny both dated 1806. I suppose Dr. Whitaker put these in as a memorial of his labours, though one would have expected him to have got new coins for the purpose. The coins show no signs of wear, and may have been put in the year they were struck by some still earlier excavator. In this clay were also found some mussel shells, modern potsherds, and three clay tobacco pipes. About four feet below the top a mass of hard slate-coloured clay was struck, and it was clear that if this continued all hopes of the mound being a tumulus would have to be abandoned. Our fears were soon realised when boulders of limestone were thrown out all scored from end to end with deep ice-scratches. However, to make quite sure that the mound was not artificial, and the boulder-clay found merely a mass thrown upon it at some time, the digging was continued until the boulder-clay appeared in the third level (the digging was made in four steps), some thirteen feet below the top, and was also found to continue on the second level, nine feet below the top, right to the centre of the mound. It was then quite evident that it was only a mass of moraine matter. The till is of the dark slate colour one would expect to find in a carboniferous limestone district. The only sign of stratification was a long tongue of sand which ran out in a down-valley direction from behind a large boulder, from which it would appear that the boulders and clay were dropped into water which was running beneath the ice. The discovery that the mound was only a mass of glacial deposit was not a great surprise; my doubt of its being a tumulus had already led me to open the other mound first, and the truth was suggested as long ago as 1876, as will be seen in the following passage from Hardwick's Ancient Battlefields in Lancashire, p. 141: " On gazing across the river at the larger 'lowe' of the six-inch Ordnance Map, Mr. Parkinson (of Brockhall) remarked that it appeared to him to be what is termed by geologists an outlier of the boulder deposits on each side of the valley, and therefore not an artificial mound. He pointed out that the flood waters of the Ribble, Hodder, and Calder met in the plain, and when the 'till' was excavated by a kind of circular motion of the combined waters, which the present appearance of the valley indicates, the land situated in the centre or vortex would the longer resist the abrading action, and eventually, as the passage of the currents became enlarged, remain a surviving outlier of the general mass of glacial deposit." This account appears to me to be the true one, for I could find no internal cause, e.g., a rock, why this mass should be left when the remainder was washed away. The ice has left abundant marks of its passage over this district, vast quantities of boulder-clay lie in the bed of the valley, and several large erratic blocks and masses of conglomerate are perched on the hillsides within half a mile of the Lowe. Mr. R. H. Tiddeman, F.G.S.,* has found striæ on the rocks in the valley, on the hillsides, and on top of the fells on both sides of the valley. Nearly all these striations run in a southern direction, and must be footprints of the great icefield of north Britain in its southward march. Other striæ may be found on the rocks in river-beds, with the westward trend of the rivers. These would seem to have been scored in by the true glaciers of the latter days of the Glacial Period. So this mound had stood for thousands of years before its fellow was erected by the old Celts, and it is probable that they too thought it to be a tumulus, and were led by this supposition to place the great tomb of their chief in close proximity. Is is quite possible that the ancient Britons made some "secondary" interments in this mound, and I have tried to find such in several places, but without success. The labour of digging was very great, for the boulder clay was almost as hard as the metal of a macadamised road, but I hope the labour was not lost, for at least the true origin of this mound, which has given rise to so many fancies, has been finally settled. * Journal Geological Society, vol. xviii., 1872. [An address at the annual soirée, 11th December, 1895.] A SHORT time ago an Anglo-Indian friend, whom I had not seen for ten years, called upon me, and left as a keepsake a bronze Roman coin, which he had bought in Egypt. When I was asked to give an address at this gathering it struck me that I might make of this coin a little object-lesson in archæology. What is there of interest, we may be asked, in this coin? It is not specially rare, it has no great pecuniary value, and whilst it is not of the most debased type it has no special artistic quality. It is simply one of those realien, which help to touch the historic imagination, and to bring us into closer contact "with dead men's words and the works of dead men's hands." It is a small bronze coin of the Emperor Aurelianus. On the one side are seen the striking features of this soldier of fortune, the cuirass, and the radiated head, indicating |