Thirty of these shafts were excavated in succession; and amongst the rubbish of all kinds with which they were filled were found some well cut celts, showing no trace of polish, and some weapons or tools of the Moustérien type. The number of half-finished implements, and the even greater quantity of chips, points to these shafts having formed a centre of manufacture. Many of the implements were made of stag-horn, and amongst them we must mention some picks which, curiously enough, exactly resemble those of Belgium and the south of France.19 Similar wooden picks are found in the copper mines of the Asturias, in the salt mines of Salzburg, and in a petroleum well recently opened on the frontier between the United States and Canada. In all these localities traces can be made out of ancient mining operations. But to return to Cissbury: from amongst the prehistoric ruins there were also taken, numerous fragments of pottery, not at all like Roman ware, with the bones of the horse, goat, boar, and ox, all still represented in the fauna of England; with oyster-shells, and the shells of both land and sea mollusca, of species still to be found in Great Britain. But no trace has so far been discovered of metals, and neither the flint implements nor the bones of animals have any of the marks of rust so characteristic of the Bronze and Iron ages. Must we not then conclude that these shafts were sunk at a time long prior to the earliest historic period? The walls of the subterranean galleries of Cissbury bore not only cup-shaped ornaments, strive, and curved or broken lines, recalling those on the megalithic monuments of Scotland and Ireland; but Park Harrison has made out some regular _runes_, or written characters, of which a reproduction was shown at the Paris Exhibition in 1878. This last fact is the more curious, as Sayce discovered in a passage giving access to a cave near Syracuse some characters somewhat similar in form, to which he assigns a proto-Phœnician origin. We may add that certain characters made out at Cissbury, differing but little from the modern letter _b_ or the figure 6, are also found in the most ancient Palmyrian, Copt, and Syrian alphabets. Were this fact completely established, still more, if it were corroborated by other analogous facts, we should in it have a very valuable indication of the relations of England with the most ancient known navigators.