mode of delimitation seems also to have commended itself occasionally to the churchmen of old. This practice, I am inclined to think, accounts for the “moat,” now filled up, which formerly encircled the churchyard at Tooting, in the South-West of London, about two miles distant from the place where these lines are being written. Yet the late Mr T. W. Shore, the well-known archaeologist, suggested that the church had been built within a small British earthwork[238]. The position of the church, at the foot of a steep hill, seems to negative this theory, and to point to a later period, when the Church had quite triumphed over paganism. There is a still more seductive danger to entice the credulous investigator who, having heard of churchyard tumuli, would fain see barrows everywhere. Many churches have the appearance of standing on artificial hillocks simply because, for a score of generations, the surface of the ground has been continually raised by a succession of interments. The effect is most marked where the graveyard is of limited area, and is held up by strong containing masonry. The soil has long been confined within a definite space, and the turf is now almost on a level with the coping of the walls. The curvature of the surface and the bulging walls tell the rest of the story. Near the fabric, the feet of the visitor are almost in a horizontal plane with the sill of the Early English or Decorated window, so that a trench, lined with concrete, has been cut to preserve the walls from damp. The interpretation is obvious. The building, instead of being perched on a knoll, is actually in process of being sunk within a hillock which has grown up around it. Let us revert for an instant to the concealed pathway which was found six feet below the present surface at Pytchley churchyard. One imagines that this difference of level may sometimes be considerably exceeded. Huxley tells us that the skeleton of a full-grown man weighs, on the average, 24 lbs.[239] According to the analyses of bone made by Berzelius, 67 per cent. of this weight--roughly, 16 lbs.--consists of mineral salts which are practically indestructible[240]. Though the actual bulk of this residue is small, we must add to it the miscellaneous materials of the more permanent parts of the funeral furniture. This latter factor would become important after the use of coffins had spread to all classes of village folk.