NOTE (to p. 25) ON THE ETHNOLOGY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

The Anglo-Saxon historians have left us a very straight-forward account of the great ethnological divisions of their race, and as far as we have yet gone in this line of research the difference in the articles found in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, in different parts of the island, correspond with it; but the exact geographical limits are not so easily fixed, and in fact, they no doubt varied at different periods. The limits of the Kentish Jutes are clearly defined, and the same may be said of the South Saxons, the Middle Saxons, and the East Saxons; and to some degree of the Northumbrian Angles. It would not, however, be so easy to fix the exact boundary line inland of the East Angles or of the Middle Angles of Lincolnshire; and the boundary of the Mercians was continually varying. It must be under. stood that I am speaking of the Mercians of the age previous to their conversion, of the history of which we are really ignorant. We learn from the Saxon Chronicle, that in the year 571, the west Saxons under Cuthwulf took from the Britons the towns of Bedcan-ford (Bedforda), Lygean-byrg (Lenbury), Ægeles-byrg (Aylesbury), Bænesing-tun (Benson), and Egonesham (Eynesham); that in 577, under Cuthwine and Ceawlin, they defeated the Britons at Deorham, and obtained possession of Bath, Cirencester, and Gloucester; that in 584 they defeated the Britons at Fethan-lea (Frethorne, on the Severn), and took "many towns;" and we know that they subsequently extended their conquests to the Wye. It is not till 628 that we find the Mercians invading the frontiers of the West Saxons, and fighting a battle with them at Cirencester. I think, therefore, that in treating of the pagan period we may consider the kingdom of Wessex as including the modern counties of Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford, and Gloucester, and perhaps also part of Worcestershire and Herefordshire, and that the population of those districts are really Saxon and not Angle. This is a consideration which must not be lost sight of in our classification of the early Anglo-Saxon remains; and it is upon it that I have given the limit between the west Saxons and the Mercians in a map of Saxon-England during the pagan period. The Mercians appear to have pushed forth from Lincolnshire in a western and south-western direction, and so to have reached the borders of Wales at a very early period, after which they began to extend their conquests towards the south.

The distribution of the cemeteries, as marked by the small crosses in this map, is far from uninteresting; but the discoveries hitherto made have been in most cases so accidental, that it would be premature to draw any inferences from it. However, as I suspect the presence of these cemeteries marks generally the seat of what we might, perhaps, call the more aristocratic part of the race, that is, of those who were buried together with the greatest ceremony, their position has, to a certain degree, an historical importance. As far as we yet know, the mass of the great cemeteries of the Jutish race lay in east Kent, on the sea-coast from Hythe to Ramsgate, along the banks of the Thames; the cemeteries of the east Angles lay in and on the borders of Cambridgeshire; those of the Mercians especially in Leicestershire. It is rather a peculiatity of the Peak of Derbyshire that the Saxon barrows there are not found in cemeteries, but in single scattered tumuli, and that district may have been occupied by a peculiar tribe, or by a mining people, who, though not Saxons, adopted Saxon manners. They have been found rather in a similar way scattered over the Downs of Sussex. The discoveries in other parts of the country are as yet too few to allow us to form any judgment of the peculiarities in their position. The following is, as nearly as I have been able to make it, a complete list of the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of the pagan period which have hitherto been discovered. The numbers refer to the map.

KENT.

1. Chartham Down.

2. Kingston Down.

3. Gilton, in the parish of Ash.

4. Coombe, in the parish of Wednes

borough.

5. Sibertswold.

6. Barfreston Down.

7. Wingham.

KENT, continued.

8. Minster, in Thanet.

9. Osengell, in Thanet.

10. St. Margaret's, near Dover.

11. Between Folkestone and Dover.

12. Folkestone.

13. Barham.

14. Bourne Park.

15. Sittingbourne.

SHMOLEAN

OXFORD

LIBRARY

36. Roundway Down, near Devizes, Wilts. 71. Cestersover, near Rugby, Warwickshire. 37. Fairford, Gloucestershire.

The preparation of Cobalt and its Oxides, has always possessed a considerable degree of interest for those engaged in the study of Chemistry: greater perhaps than its relative importance to other branches of manufacturing industry would appear to warrant. This perhaps is in part owing to the difficulty which has always been experienced in obtaining correct information, from the limited number of persons practically engaged in the manufacture, by which a subject, in itself really very simple, has been wrapped up in a kind of mysterious secrecy; and partly also, perhaps, from exaggerated ideas of the scarcity of cobalt ores, and the value of the products derived from them. Believing that an authentic account of the process by which cobalt and zaffer blues have been prepared for the use of the earthenware manufacturers may not prove unacceptable, I have been induced to attempt to describe it; and however trifling may be the actual value of the information which I can communicate, it may at least be relied on, as being derived from a practical knowledge of the business in which I myself, as well as my late father, have been engaged at Sutton Heath, near St. Helens, during the last thirty years.

I need scarcely observe, that the metals which I shall frequently have occasion to mention, namely, cobalt and nickel, were from their apparent worthlessness and intractability, objects of dislike and even dread to the earlier miners and metallurgists, who applied to them the names of some among those goblins with whom the German imagination, ever keenly alive to the supernatural, peopled the dark recesses of their mines. Cobold still figures as a malicious fiend in the legends of the Hartz mountains, and Pelz Nickel is I believe, a kind of Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, rather mischievous than really malevolent, in the German nursery tales. The application of cobalt to the arts dates from a much earlier period than that of nickel, which has only been sought after and become valuable since the introduction of the so-called German silver, of which it forms the principal and characteristic ingredient.