and from the shores of the German Ocean to those of the Atlantic? The race that first began to carve them were, there is reason to believe, that race among our forefathers who erected the cromlechs, the chambered barrows, the stone circles, the large monoliths and the other megalithic works, which are still found scattered over the British Islands. If we may judge from the evidence afforded by the barrows opened in our own country, in the Channel Islands and in Brittany, these megalithic builders appear to have been still sparingly, if at all, provided with metallic tools; and the chisellings and carvings upon the stones themselves can be all, I find, easily imitated, even on granite rocks, by flint weapons and a mallet. The ethnological proofs gathered from the examination of the crania found in connexion with megalithic sepulchral structures tend, as far as they go at present, to point to a race different from, and seemingly anterior to, the appearance of the Celtic race in our Islands. If this view, (a view held by some of our first archeologists,) ultimately prove to be correct, then we have in the Calder Stones,-and and within hail, as it were, of the busy mart and great modern city of Liverpool,-a stone structure erected and carved by a Turanian race, who dwelt in this same locality, and lived and died in this same home many long centuries before Roman or Saxon, Dane or Norman, set his invading foot upon the shores of Britain; and possibly anterior even to that far more distant date, when in their migration westward the Cymry and Celt first reached this remote "Isle of the Sea." The extreme rudeness and simplicity of the British cup and ring cuttings afford at least sufficient evidence of their very early and archaic character; while their general diffusion proves that the race or races,-be they Celtic or Pre-Celtic,-that carved them, must at one time have widely overspread both the kingdoms of England and of Scotland, ON THE ROMAN TOPOGRAPHY OF EAST LANCASHIRE. By T. T. Wilkinson, F.R.A.S. &c. (READ 16TH MARCH, 1865.) THE tenth Iter of Antonine is well known to have passed from north to south through the county of Lancaster. Its principal stations are now much better defined than when the Rev. Thomas Reynolds published his Commentary in A.D. 1799; for he remarks, (page 315,) that "no Iter in Britain "has exercised the ingenuity of antiquaries so much, or been "made out so little satisfactory." He fixes Bremetonacis at Lancaster; Coccium at Ribchester; and Mancunium = Mamucium, at Manchester. In this arrangement he is followed by several other antiquaries who have written since his time. The Rev. John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, prefers to place Coccium at Blackrod, for which he is censured by the historian of Whalley; and the reader is cautioned against trusting too much to the guidance of Richard of Cirencester. This caution, however, must now be somewhat modified; for in his time "no concurrence of roads, "no discovered remains, led to the supposition that two "stations or towns of eminence, in the age of Ptolemy or of "Caracalla, were planted on the banks of the Ribble." (History of Whalley, p. 13, Ed. 1818.) A second station. has nevertheless been found on this river, near to Walton-leDale; and its discoverer, Mr. Charles Hardwick, has given a full account of it in Vol. VIII, pp. 127-140, of the Transac tions of this Society, and again in pp. 39-46 of his valuable History of Preston. A fall of earth at this place has recently disclosed a very fine portion of Roman pavement, probably forming a part of the military road from Walton to Lancaster. The pavement lay about thirty inches below the present surface of the soil; it was nearly ten yards wide, and was composed of boulder stones, sand and gravel, very firmly set. Since then a well-preserved coin of Germanicus has been found on the site of the new station; and these, together with numerous fragments of pottery &c. &c., abundantly prove that the Romans certainly had a second permanent station on the Ribble not far from the present town of Preston. The tradition, therefore, that Preston rose from the ruins of Ribchester must now be modified, since it is much more likely to have been founded from those at Walton. Under these circumstances I am disposed to agree with Mr. Hardwick that, "till better evidence be produced," the following may be regarded as the most probable interpretation of the Roman topography of this portion of Britain. = Seteia Estuarium Estuary of the Dee. Belisama Estuarium = Estuary of the Ribble. = Walton, near Preston. Rigodunum = Rerigonium = Ribchester. Colunio Calanea Colne. (Ibid, pp. 36-7.) = Mr. Hardwick does not attempt to fix the station "Ad Alpes Peninos" of Richard's Itinerary; but suggests, as others had done before him, that it was somewhere near Pendle Hill. The tenth Iter of Antonine is then corrected by writing" Coccium= Walton," and this station completes a "double line of forts, to guard the passes over the principal "rivers in Lancashire." The first line is placed "at the "head of the tidal estuaries of the Mersey, the Ribble and "the Lune." It comprises Condate Wilderspool, near = |