This pillar of granite, in form of an inverted cone, three feet four inches high, from eight inches I-half to six inches I-half diameter, with an inscription in Oriental characters in six lines, each letter three inches I-fourth high, was brought 1726 from Alexandria, where it was found buried in the sands, and supposed to have served as a tomb stone. It was given by captain Childerston, who brought it to England, to Mr. John Oxley, surgeon in Horsley Down, Southwark. It came afterwards about 1737 or 1738 to Mr. Ames, then living at Wapping; and was purchased after his decease by the late James West, Esq; and on his death by Gustavus Brander, Esq; F.A.S. who has since presented it to the Society of Antiquaries, together with the several papers addressed to Mr. Ames attempting to illustrate and explain its original designation. From these papers the following abstract is here subjoined with additional observations interwoven.

The stones marked 1, 2, in plate II. were taken out of the ground about A. D. 1760, in removing a large stone at Durwood near Hartle moor in the Peak; they lay by the side of a large urn, half full of burnt bones. They are flat at top, but somewhat convex on the under sides, and fig. 2. which Mr. Rooke has in his possession, is about four inches and a half thick. They are about a foot diameter, but fig. 2. is so much less than the other, that when laid upon it (and one cannot doubt but they were intended to be placed one upon the other), it could be turned round within the rim of it.

A late determination of the Court of Kings's Bench in favour of a person who appealed to that court from a sentence of the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, induced our late worthy member the Rev. Dr. Richardson, to inquire into the origin and extent of the power of the vice-chancellor in that university: and the historical notes, which accompany this letter, were the result of that inquiry. He had just finished these notes, when he was attacked by a disease which ended fatally. They are now presented to the Society of Antiquaries, in pursuance of the author's desire, which he signified to me a few days before his death.

As some of our most signal victories in former centuries were chiefly attributed to the English archers, it may not be uninteresting to the Society if I lay before them what I have been able to glean with regard to the more flourishing slate of our bowmen, till their present almost annihilation.

I have the honour of exhibiting to the Society an impression of the official seal of Richard duke of Gloucester (afterwards king Richard the Third); as lord admiral of England and earl of Dorset and Somerset. The original seal is in brass, and in the most perfect preservation. It was the property of Mr. Joseph Hankey, attorney at St. Column in Cornwall, who purchased it in a lot of old brass and iron amongst the household goods of one Mr. Jackson, an innkeeper of that town. How Mr. Jackson came possessed of it does not appear. He was a native of Cumberland, from which he removed first to Holdsworthy, after to Crediton in Devonshire, and afterwards to St. Columb in Cornwall, where he died. He seemed not to have put any value upon the seal, nor to have ever mentioned it to any of his family.

Upon the perusal of an Essay on the four great Roman Ways in the sixth volume of Leland's Itinerary, as well as other authors on the subject, I find no satisfactory account has been given of the continuation of the Fosse Way, and Rycknild Street, through the counties of York and Durham; some imagining the former to have terminated at Inverness in Scotland, without describing its course from Lincoln; and we are left in a similar state of uncertainty respecting the latter, which most writers have traced no farther than the borders of Derbyshire; though all seem to agree, that it extended to Tynemouth in Northumberland; where two curious Roman altars have lately been digged up, the drawing of which by my direction have been transmitted to my friend the Rev. Mr. Norris for the inspection of the Society. I shall therefore enter into a discussion of the subject, and submit to you, as concisely as I can, the result of my enquiries, hoping for indulgence wherever your better informed judgement shall differ from me.

As far as I can judge of a subject I am so little acquainted with, I entirely approve what you have written to Dr. Kaye. You have set me right in a mistake I have all along been under; viz. that it is the Fosse and not Watling Street, that runs through Ebchester, Corbridge, Risingham, &c. This road divides into two branches on the other side of Corbridge, the easternmost of which leads through Rial, Capheaton, through my wood at Hartburn, then along Thornton Moor, and crosses the Coquet, I believe, near Brinkburn, and at last the Tweed into Scotland.

If the following account of a Roman inscription which has been lately found, and which will determine Leicester to be the station called Ratæ, has not been already communicated to the Society, I will beg you to lay it before them.

Relying on the candour and benevolence of my good friend, John Charles Brooke, Esq. to put the best construction on the following observations respecting his memoir on the Saxon inscription in Aldbrough church, I have adventured to send it you. And indeed, as both he and I proceed upon the same ground and principle, the investigation of ancient truth, I may seem to have a fair claim to his indulgence, and an equitable demand to an impartial hearing at least.

In the spring of the year 1781 lord Moira; having ordered a survey to be made of a farm on his estate, his surveyor brought me a plait of hair, informing, me that it was, taken from the scull of a skeleton that had been long dug up by the tenant in the autumn of 1780. I lost no time in making an inquiry into the particulars of such a discovery, and the result of that inquiry was as follows:

I once mentioned to you the coat which my friend Mr. Fox delivers to you with this letter. It was found ten years ago fifteen feet under ground, in a turf bog or peat moss, and along with it many hundred iron heads of arrows, some bowls of beech and alder and other wooden utensils, many of which were unfinished, and two or three sacks full of nuts.

As the progress in architecture from the earliest and rudest times hath frequently been the subject of dissertation, perhaps it may not be uninteresting to trace the gradual improvements in both fruit and pleasure gardens.

Arbour-Lows are an ancient monument, so well known in the country, that supposing a stranger desirous of visiting it (and indeed it is well worth visiting by the curious antiquary), and once arrived at Bakewell about five miles distant from it, he will not fail of meeting with a competent direction to the place.

Inclosed I send to you for the inspection and amusement of the Society four drawings, viz. two views, a plan, and a section of the ruins of a very uncommon building, near Dundalk in Ireland. I had seen in Mr. Wright's Louthiana a neat plan of this building, he calls a ship-temple: he however says, that the name it goes by in the country, is

Fags na ain eighe, or

The one night's work.

Have lately purchased a pair of the largest fossil horns, I believe, ever found in Ireland, with some of the bones of that enormous race of deer which are dug up in the strata of marle that lye beneath our bogs. I do not find that they are discovered in the bogs themselves, but generally in the marle pits which are opened after the peat grass is removed, One of these horns measures from the root at its insertion in the scull to the tip of its remotest branch seven feet and one inch; the other six feet and nine inches; to which add the interval of four inches in the scull between their roots, and the distance from the tip of one horn to the tip of the other is fourteen feet four inches. The scull which is intire measures from the end to the vertebræ of the neck to the tip of the note twenty-three inches; the breadth of the forehead above the eyes is eleven inches and 1-fourth.

The Society of Antiquaries having been pleased to admit my former conjectures on Roman Ways hitherto unnoticed and undescribed, permit me to offer by way of appendix, some conjectures on the station at Binchester; which being situated upon one of the strata, and of great eminence under the Roman government, may not be an improper subject for investigation.

Herein I transmit to you, for the consideration of the Society, extracts of letters from colonel Vallancy to me, touching some singular remains of very high antiquity found in Ireland, together with copper-plate impressions of drawings of the articles referred to.

I beg leave to address you in regard to another mass of Roman lead lately discovered in Derbyshire. Your attachment to this subject expressed to me in one of your late letters gives me great confidence to hope you will not think me troblesome in engaging your attention once more as briefly as I can.

On Hathersage Moor in the high Peak, not far from the road that goes from Sheffield to Manchester, is a British work, called Cair's work. See the plan Pl. XIII. fig. I. It is about two hundred yards in length, and sixty-one in width. It takes in an hill precipitous all round, except at the north end, where there is a wall of a very singular construction. It is near three feet thick, and consists of three rows of very large stones. On the top are other large stones, set obliquely end ways, a view of which is in the same plate fig. I. at b. The inside is filled up with earth and stones, which form the vallum, and slope inwards twenty-five feet. The height of the wall to the top of the sloping stones (as abovementioned) is nine feet four inches. The principal entrance seems to have been at the east end of the wall; a lesser one is on the west side; both marked (c) in the plan. The area of this work is full of rocks and large stones; several of these are rocking stones, three of which are engraved in Plate XIII. fig 2. (a) thirteen feet in length, (b) eight feet, (c) nine feet fix inches; and others have rock basons.

I am very glad to find that the ingenious major Rooke has furnished the Society with drawings of that curious remain of very early fortification, the Caers-work (or, as the name was given me, the Carle's-work) near Hathersage in Derbyshire. It was first noticed in print (I believe) in the tour into that country which I ventured to lay before the public this year, but is much better illustrated by the major. If it will not be improper to offer the Society two drawings in addition to those which Mr. Rooke has sent, I will beg you to present them.