ported by thicker rafters, that appeared to have run from the plate of the building to what is now called the ridge. All these wands, cross-pieces and rafters, except those which had been hewn and in previous use, as well as the interlacing binders, retained the silvery hue of their bark, and not only were the slender wands of the roof moulded by pressure from above round the cross pieces; but the rafters in a similar manner had formed matrices in the wood, which they sustained. All were black with age, decay and smoke, and many exhibited undoubted proofs of having been portions of a more ancient and substantial building.

I will not undertake to determine whether all the roof had been thatched I think not, certainly in some parts we found no signs; but in others, both from above and beneath the timber, was removed a strewment of rushes and grass of various kinds, especially the Rumex acetosa in seed, and which, I observed, grew at the time of our visit, most profusely around the hill and on its summit. Beneath these lay a festering mass of debris to the thickness of two feet six inches, which concealed a rude and uneven pavement of river boulders. These were embedded in a greyish kind of earth, that doubtless had once been surface soil; but it was not easily recognised at first on account of its being saturated with animal matter and thickly maculated with white spots, which on exposure to the air quickly turned blue. This effect is produced, Mr. Hardwick says, by Vivianite composed of the phosphate of lime from bones in contact with iron. Such was the case here, this chemical compound being formed from the ossiferous remains and metal instruments, buried in the debris, their fluid matter had percolated through the pavement into the substance beneath. Besides, the preservation of the articles discovered lying on the pavement, must be ascribed to the same cause. Time had but little corroded the iron.

The outer walls of this antique ruin were most probably constructed after the manner of the roof, by strong poles planted side by side, by wattling, or by “raddle and daub"; but, that the building had consisted of more than one apartment seems probable from the different methods of roofing adopted, and a perceptible variation in the height of the pavement. The main portion, however, appeared to have been circular, from the fact of broken stumps of uprights taking that form; and these uprights had been sharpened by a keen small axe, evidently not a bronze one. The pavement of the interior was disclosed at the bottom of shaft D, in figures 4 and 5, plate iii; but the whole of it

was not exhumed;-only thirteen yards in length by six broad. Nor were any signs of the margin met with at any point, except the north; whilst the circumference of the hill, where the paved floor of boulders rested, could not be less than one hundred and forty yards. Thus we can merely guess at the size of the whole building, though there may also have been a stockade round the outer rim of the summit, now totally decayed. The method of supporting the roof of the principal apartment at least, may be conjectured with greater certainty. At B in figures 4 and 5, plate iii, there remained fixed in the ground a rude, heavy, and partially squared oak post, which had been broken off five feet from the floor, and bored with three holes for the insertion of pegs. This, perhaps, was the centre pillar, the main support of the roof; but to what use the solid, broken planks that lay on the pavement on the north east and south west sides had been converted, it is difficult to determine. I will only record, that one of them was pressed upon two strong rafters and crosspieces, and that both had been riven and not cut by the saw; since their knots had been torn from their sockets. They may have been a portion of the outer wall, or roof of the building, as the holes through them and the foot length pegs found near, would seem to testify. One thing is certain, the age so visibly stamped on them, and the centre pillar, proclaims that they have witnessed many a restoration of such a fragile building as the one from which they were disinterred.

The question now occurs, who were the occupants of this dwelling on Castle hill; when was it destroyed; and who elevated the mound to its present height and formed its conical shape? To these questions we may perhaps obtain an answer by a near inspection of the bones, instruments, and even the building itself, out of the ruins of which they were exhumed.

In the early period of our island's history, dense forests covered the face of the whole country. The Doomsday survey records that in the Confessor's reign the adjacent parish of Leyland contained woods eight miles in length by four and a quarter broad, and that Penwortham also, after the conquest, was not destitute of one. And these were well stocked with game of every kind; nor during the Saxon period was the owner of the land restricted from free warren over his property. At a distant period the huge-horned Bos primigenius,-was it the Urus of Cæsar?-roamed through their thickets and glades together with the Bos latifrons and longifrons, whose skulls, teeth and horns are still dragged from the Ribble,

and those of the latter exhumed from the Roman camps at Kirkham and Walton. Moreover, herds of bucks, bevies of roes and red deer (Cervus Elaphus,) sounders of wild swine and singulars of boars were very numerous, as well as land and water fowl, which were captured by snares and by hawking with birds from the neighbouring aeries; sports with that of hunting with the hound and horn, so highly esteemed by the Saxon nobility, that it was an essential branch of education and the business of life, except when the nobler game of war engrossed their attention.

The bones of the animals, discovered amid the ruins of the dwelling on Castle hill, all belonged to those which are given for food to man; yet as they existed from the earliest period to the medieval ages in Britain, no inference can be drawn from them of the date of its erection, or the time when the hunters feasted on their flesh. The Cervus Elaphus is indigenious. Professor Owen says "The oldest stratum in Britain yielding evidence of a Cervus of the size of the red-deer is the red-crag of Newbourne." A more specific character, however, of this sized deer is afforded by antlers, as well as teeth and bones, and these attest the existence of the Cervus Elaphus through intermediate formations, as the newest fresh water pliocene and the mammoth silt of the ossiferous caves, to the growth of existing turbaries and peat bogs. Camden speaks of them as roaming wild in his time among the Hellbecks of Richmondshire. Pies of the wild boar, red deer, and cow, slain in the woods of Hoghton Tower, feasted king James on his visit there. Nor are they yet extinct. They exist in the Highlands of Scotland, in Windsor park, and even at Knowsley.

Neither was the wild Boar totally eradicated from our thickets, in which it had sought shelter from the earliest times, until the mediæval ages. An inscription on a Roman altar records "That it was not possible to destroy it on account of the density of the woods." Whittaker of Manchester relates-"How the wild boar roved over the woods in that parish during many centuries after the Romans had departed, that it gave the name of Barlow or Boar's ground to a track in the south west of that parish, and that it retained its haunts in the wilds of Blakely within the last three or four ages." Fitzstephen in his history of London at the latter part of the tenth century, observes" that Boars were among the wild animals, which frequented a forest, then surrounding the city." But, were the bones discovered those of wild, or domestic swine? The snout of the former was longer than that of the latter and the tusk