In one barrow belonging to that period, a deposit of burnt bones was underlain by wood, and was covered with charcoal and wood ashes, probably the remains of the funeral pile[721]. On the other hand, a barrow which was opened by Canon Atkinson contained pieces of charcoal, varying in size from a bean to a nutmeg, scattered through the material of the mound[722]. Other cases might be given from the investigations of Pitt-Rivers. Late Frankish cemeteries have yielded fragments of charcoal[723], and the same may be said of Mediaeval graves in France[724]. The accidentals of cremation ceremonies clearly survived the essentials, and a pagan custom was engrafted on Christian rite. The Mediaeval churchman’s explanation of the charcoal is thus given by Durandus: _Carbones in testimonium, quod terra illa ad communes usus amplius redigi non potest, plus enim durat carbo sub terra quam aliud_[725]; that is: Charcoal is employed to show that the earth can no longer be put to ordinary uses, because charcoal endures underground longer than any other substance. Is there any known instance of the actual use of flint flakes at Christian funerals? Research has so far given a negative reply, but a scrap or two of evidence may be produced. Canon Atkinson found flint chippings and even the ruder kinds of implements in the churchyards of Cleveland[726]. The present writer picked up a flint flake from a newly-dug grave at Northolt, Middlesex, and another, a long, thin specimen, with a “back ridge,” at Warlingham churchyard, Surrey. The risks of drawing an inference from such isolated occurrences as these are both numerous and patent. The churchyard was once part of the open country, and these flakes might, perhaps, originally have been derived from the surface soil. Again, chips of a rough kind fall as waste when flint is dressed and squared for church walls. A sufficient knowledge of the properties of modern and ancient flakes enables the observer to dismiss this source of error, though it must be stated that both at Warlingham and Northolt flint forms a portion of the structural materials. Now the two flakes described were not whitened by exposure and dissolution of the colloidal portion of the silica. They had retained their old unpatinated surface, save that a polish had been acquired; one may therefore conclude that they had lain for a considerable period in a close impervious clay or loam. Probably they had been dug from a depth of two or three feet below the surface. The specimens were certainly ancient. Should instances of this nature be recorded with a fair degree of frequency, the meaning might be deciphered in either of two ways: the adaptation of a pagan site for a Christian place of worship, or the casting of flint chips into a Christian grave. Whether the occurrence of quantities of ancient splinters of flint near a churchyard, as at St Paul’s Cray, Kent, must be interpreted in the same manner, is not so clear. I prefer to await