further records, which are, from the nature of the case, difficult to procure. The flints are mysterious witnesses, at most, and the sceptic may justly scorn their testimony, if asked to consider these objects alone. But the triad of flints, potsherds, and charcoal, stands moderately firm. Concerning the charcoal, we have fortunately, apart from the relics, the words of Durandus to help us to read the ostensible meaning. But assume that we were unaware of the Mediaeval character of some of the graveyard pottery, who would believe that the custom of interring potsherds was observed at so late a period? The sceptic would say that the scraps represented prehistoric urns accidentally occurring in the churchyard soil. We should be justified in refusing our assent at the outset, but we should have to reconsider the matter when we found that the habit of breaking vessels and utensils over the dead is common among many races[727]. Moreover, there is a record, within the last thirty years, of a Lincolnshire woman’s breaking pottery over her husband’s grave, because she had forgotten to inter the perfect vessels with the body. At present, then, we must allow that there is a possible preliminary case in favour of the flints, if these should be now and again detected. Let us summarize the last few paragraphs. The original purpose of placing apparently useless potsherds with the dead was to provide the departed tribesman with the spiritual utensils thus represented, the spirit-forms having been liberated by the breaking of the vessels. Similarly, the charcoal, the calcined pebbles or “pot-boilers,” and the few scraps of flint, would supply him with fire, first material, afterwards spiritual. Thus he had the means of making a fire, and of carrying water and hot embers. “Poor indeed,” says Professor T. Rupert Jones, “was the greatest of the heroes, on his dreary death-path, who had not ‘a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit’ (Isa. xxx. 14)[728].” So far, the theory agrees well with the explanation given respecting votive implements and weapons. Moreover, we can see how the idea of “laying the spirit” with hot stones and fractured flints may have arisen. The homeless ghost would be happy only when fealty had been proved by funeral gifts. Careless or daring folk who neglected to pay the tribute would, in dreams, receive visits from the disembodied dead. Where no affection or respect existed, experience might teach that formal adherence to custom was prudent. The explanation based on actual needs seems only to suffice for those cases where the flint and earthenware gifts are solitary, or at any rate, few, like the celts and arrow-heads. Wherever the flint flakes are counted by scores, and the potsherds, broken, it may be, from vessels made expressly for the sepulchre, are representative of many individual pieces of pottery, the idea involved seems to be, not mere utility, but