A remarkable instance of anticipation will illustrate, to some extent, what has just been said. The antiquary is well aware that, during the Stuart period, in order to encourage the woollen industry, statutes were passed (A.D. 1666, 1678, 1680), which made it compulsory to bury the dead in woollen shrouds. An interesting chapter of burial-lore might be written on this curious subject, for the Acts, though they had long been in abeyance, were not repealed until late in the reign of George III. (A.D. 1814)[683]. The practice is recalled in our own day when, by request of the dying person, the body is enfolded in some special garb, usually of wool, before being committed to the earth. The strange circumstance, however, is that such a custom should have been foreshadowed in the far-away past. In Danish burials belonging to the earliest Bronze Age, the bodies are sometimes found to have been placed in hollowed tree trunks, and the remains show that a woollen shroud had been used. Skeletons wrapped in a woollen textile have likewise been discovered at Rylston, in the Western Riding of Yorkshire[684]. I have provisionally regarded these instances as revealing anticipations rather than origins, but it is possible that many intermediate examples could be supplied. One of these gradations is perhaps traceable in the custom of burying a person in his ordinary dress. If these links were complete, there would obviously be entire continuity, but if we encountered a gap, it is probable that the eighteenth century practice would have to be considered as a “throw-back.” It is now time to review the custom, still common among uncivilized peoples, and once extremely popular in Britain, of placing objects with the corpse in the grave. A mass of evidence has been collated and examined, and though only a portion can be given here, we must, while shunning tediousness, present as much detail as is actually profitable. A rough preliminary classification of these funerary objects would include, (1) weapons and useful implements; (2) amulets, talismans, and symbolical objects; (3) trinkets, ornaments, and decorative articles; (4) a miscellaneous group, partly useful, partly symbolical or commemorative. It is necessary to premise that this classification is conventional, and lacks well-defined boundaries, hence, while dealing with one series of relics, other groups will be forced upon our attention, producing, later, unavoidable repetition.