ingeniously fitted in, though not found in situ, and a large rift on one side had been still more cleverly repaired with wooden patches caulked with moss. No metal had been used in any part of it. The boat was found embedded in the blue and brown clay which underlies the peat, and is considered on geological evidence, which is given with great detail, to be from 2600 to 3000 years old. It was offered by Mr. Cary Elwes to the British Museum, but was declined as being too large; it is, however, now suitably housed at Brigg.
Many similar oaken boats of smaller dimensions have been discovered in various parts of England, and I saw one myself which had been just dug out of a peat bed close to Shapwick Station, in Somersetshire, in September 1906, which was 20 feet long by 2 feet 10 inches wide.
At Brigg an ancient causeway was discovered, which is described by Mr, Claye in the same pamphlet, and a photograph given. This roadway was found in a brickyard lying between the two branches of the river, under a deposit of blue alluvial clay, and above the forest bed which lies on the top of the glacial drift, and was probably made by the early Britons to secure a safe passage across the valley when it was little more than a swamp. Small trees and branches of yew were laid lengthwise, and across them rough planks of oak, which were fixed in their place by long wooden pins driven through holes at each end. From the photograph the wood appears to have been well preserved, but having been covered up again shortly after the excavation was made, I can give no further details of its condition. In the same place was discovered a sort of raft or flat-bottomed boat, 4o feet long and 6 feet wide, which was also covered up again. From the illustration given, this seems to have been made of five logs placed side by side, and held together by cross ties passing through holes in projections on the upper side of the logs.
In the foundations of Winchester Cathedral, oak piles had been used to form a solid foundation in the wet peaty soil on which part of the structure rested. When the Cathedral was under restoration in 1906, samples of these piles sent me by Mr. Jackson, the architect of the work, who said that they were put down in the time of William Rufus, were in places decayed. Some logs of beech laid horizontally under the same building, which Mr. Jackson attributes to Bishop de Lucy, about a.d. 1206, remained comparatively sound, and, though the wood has changed from its natural colour to a grey, is fit to use as boards for bookbinding.
With regard to the foundations of the Campanile at Venice, it has been stated that they were laid on larch piles, which are still used in that city for the same purpose; but when I was at Venice in 1905 I inquired into this, and was given a section of an oak pile only about 6 inches in diameter, but perfectly sound and very hard, which was cut from one of the piles taken from the foundation of the Campanile after it fell. (H.J.E.)
