composed of unabraded flint, with a whitened surface, or the “tests” or outer coverings would have been of calcite, with an amorphous interior filling of chalk. But this opinion, confidently and frequently repeated, seemed to credit the Bronze Age man with much too great a familiarity with chalk fossils. It appeared strange that he should have extracted the fossils from the parent chalk by the aid of a deerhorn pick or a celt of flint or bronze. The presumption was more likely that the specimens were silicified “casts” which had been dissolved out of the chalk mass ages previously, and which, lying on, or near the surface, when the primitive settler tilled the downs for a livelihood, met with the approval of his keen eye. Accordingly, I wrote to Mr Smith, who, in a letter dated 3 May, 1909, stated that this supposition was correct--the fossils were of flint, and had been washed out of the Clay-with-Flints. In other words, they had not been derived immediately from the parent chalk. It may be appositely remarked in this place that the fame of fossil echinoderms is well attested by the folk-name “Fairy loaf,” already given, not to speak of such genuine popular terms as “Shepherd’s crown” or “Shepherd’s helmet” (_Echinocorys_), and “Sugar loaf” (_Conulus = Echincconus = Galerites_). Concerning the Fairy loaf, the legend runs that whoso will keep a specimen in his house shall never lack bread. [Illustration: FIG. 59. Skeletons of woman and child, surrounded by fossil echinoderms. The relics were found by Mr Worthington G. Smith in a round barrow on Dunstable Downs. ] But the watchful eye of the barrow-builder saw other derelict fossils besides Micrasters and their allies. Man of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, though deficient in the artistic skill of his Palaeolithic predecessor, exhibited some selective taste even in matters of daily life. Often one lights upon an implement which has been made from a particular substance chosen for its natural beauty. Thus, one perforated hammer is of a green colour; another, of gneissose rock, is banded alternately black and white; a third, from a Wiltshire barrow, contains a mass of fossil serpulae (worm-tubes). Sir John Evans, who records the last-named example, leaves it an open question whether superstition or love of beauty determined the choice[760]. While, as already suggested, the detached fossil was probably regarded as a charm, the section of such a fossil, visible on the surface of a polished celt, or the delicately moulded impression of a shell on a flint flake, was carefully left untouched, mainly for artistic reasons. One occasionally sees an axe in which a fossil remains intact, yet the tool was meant for everyday use. Scrapers, too, are often deftly fashioned from portions of a banded flint, and many arrow-heads chipped from agate or chalcedony speak of beauty as well as utility. In the course of time such objects may indeed have appealed to their owners as talismans.