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ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE. 221 fastcnocl by a catch at the other end. The face of it is most richly orna- mented with perforated work, adorned with five projecting studs, and minutely twisted silver wire. The central stud alone remains. This curious piece of pierced work was attached to the face of the fibula, by means of four sets of holes, formed in the principal portion of the ornament, which in the side view is represented without its ornamental covering. The large hole was caused by the pick-axe." The annexed representations of this fibula are of the original size. Fibulaj of tliis remarkable type have been found in the north of Europe. Herr Worsaae has given a curious example in his " Diinemarks Vorzeit," a work most valuable to the English archteologist, and of which a translation by IIr. Thoms, with additional communications from the author, is now in the press. The mode of fastening is there distinctly shewn. A similar fibula is given in the Yetusta Monumenta, vol. ii. pi. xx., de- scribed as " an oval brass ornament of chased work, somewhat like the embossment of a horse-bit. It was found together with a brass pin and a brass needle, one on each side of a skeleton, in the Isle of Sangay, between the Isles of Uril and Harris, to the west of Scotland." It is also stated, that " the fellow of it" was preserved in the British Museum. Another was discovered in a tumulus in Lancashire, with a stone hammer, beads, and various remains, according to an interesting communication, for which we are indebted to Mr. Michael Jones, and which we hope to bring before the notice of our readers. A pair of ornaments, verj- similar to that found on the Leeming-lane, were discovered by Mr. Rendall, with a skeleton and various remains, near Pier-o-Wall, Orkney, and are figured in the Journal of the British Archreological Association, with a memoir by Mr. Crofton CrokeriJ. PERIOD OF GOTHIC ART. The Rev. Edwin G. Jarvis, vicar of Hackthorn, near Lincoln, has com- municated a note of a singular discovery recently made at Market Rasen, in Lincolnshire. Mr. Haslam, in his curious memoir on the ancient Oratories of Cornwall, and the holy wells frequently found adjacent to them, published in a former volume of the Archaeological Journal, noticed the prevalent custom, in former times, of dropping pins into these wells. He stated that pins might be collected by the handful, especially at ancient wells reputed as sacred, and that thousands of pins might be found at a spot near the way to the oratory of St. Piran in the sands ; since it had been customary, ac- cording to tradition, to drop one or two pins there, when a child was baptized*^. Borlase also mentions the superstitious practices at the well of St. Ma'ddern, near Penzance. " By dropping pins or pebbles into this foun- tain (he observes), by shaking the ground round the fountain, or by con- triving to raise bubbles from the bottom on certain days, when the moon is at a pa'-ticular stage of increase or decrease, the secrets of this well are ^ Vol. ii. p. 331. <= Archacol. Journal, vol. ii. p. 233. YOL. V. G e