Cycladic site of Phylakopi in the island of Melos, we found beneath the houses of the earliest city a series of inhumations. In every case the bones were those of children, "some old enough for the second teeth to be beginning to appear, but in no case for them to be complete." The adults appear to have been buried uniformly in a neighbouring cemetery. The bodies of these children had been placed in a contracted position inside large pots, of which the mouth was in some cases covered by a basin. They were buried in shallow depressions scooped in the rock beneath the foundations of the dwelling-houses. Here there can be no question of soulless infants being unworthy of the pyre, for adults too were buried, not cremated. It is plausible to suppose that, by being buried beneath the dwelling-house, their rebirth to the family in the person of next offspring was assured.[1]
The student wishful to gather ancient folklore of plants, as recorded in the works of the early herbalists, will find Mrs. Newell Arber's Herbals a useful book of reference. It shows to some extent where search would be rewarded, where it would probably be vain. Written professedly from the botanical and artistic standpoint, its brief summaries of the early printed herbals of Europe yet contain many references to folklore, some forgotten, some yet existing, in connection with plants. A manuscript such as the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius Platonicus, where "the greater part of the manuscript is concerned with the
- ↑ For a full account of these burials see Annual of the British School at Athens, vol. xvii., pp. 6 et seq., Fig. i, and Pls. iv. and v.
