A correspondent to ‘Notes and Queries’ (vol. i. series 3, p. 36), relates the following curious anecdote: ‘A gentleman, who was in the habit of frequenting a favourite spot for the sake of a view that interested him, used to lounge on a rail, and one day in a fit of absence of mind got fumbling about the post in which one end of the rail was inserted. On his way home he missed a valuable ring; he went back again and looked diligently for it but without success. A considerable time afterwards in visiting his old haunt, and indulging in his usual fit of absence, he was very agreeably surprised to find the ring on his finger again, and which appears to have been occasioned by (in both instances), his pressing his finger in the aperture of the post, which just fitted sufficiently with a pressure to hold the ring. I afterwards tried the experiment at the spot, and found it perfectly easy to have been effected with an easily fitting ring.’ A curious antique ring, discovered in 1867 near the site of the Priory of St. Mary, Pilton, near Barnstaple, was exhibited by Mr. Chanter, the owner, at the Exeter Meeting of the Royal Archæological Institute (July 1873). The ring is of pure gold, weighing 131 grains, a large egg-shaped sapphire being in the middle, in a solid oval setting. The stone had a hole drilled through the lower edge, through which a gold stud was passed, but it did not extend through the gold setting. The stone had been evidently flawed by the operation. The ring was intended for the thumb, and for ecclesiastical use, dating from about 1100 or 1200. A singularity is attached to the discovery. Some men were engaged in hedging, when they had to cut down some old trees. After cutting down one, they found the ‘moot’ of another underneath, and right in the centre of the latter was a round ball eight or ten inches in diameter, which the men took at first to be a cannon-ball. On opening the clay, however, the ring, bright and perfect, was exposed in the centre. A theory to account for this remarkable discovery is that the ring might have been stolen and buried by the thief for concealment under the tree in a ball of clay. For some reason or other the ring was left there, and in the course of time another tree grew over the old one.