The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-30 00:00:00

Liverpool Cotton Market—This Day,

The market has again assumed a quiet tone, and
sales will probably be about 4,000 bales. The
market has been dull all the week. Week's sales,
3400 bales, including 5,960 on speculation, and
8,673 for export. Actual export, 9,390; import,
49,178 bales; sales to the trade, 19,000. Quota-
tions—Middling Uplands, 261 to 264 ; Mobile,
261; Orleans, 27.

The Countess Dowager of Tankerville his arrived
from Paris at her house in town, Hertford-street, Mayfair.
A SILLY HOAX.—Some of the Yorkshire papers
of Saturday last contained accounts of a " Curious
Antiquarian Discovery at Driffield," in which the remains
of mesczoic life were curiously enough jumbled up with the
workmanship of man and legends of the 15th century. The
main portions of the narrative are sufficiently remarkable
for reproduction. They are as follows :—" In excavating a
chalky quarry belonging to Mr W.Clark several interesting
fossil and antiquarian discoveries have at different times re-
cently been made. At the depth of 30ft. fossil bones, in-
cluding what has been described as a human hand, shells,
sponges, and other marine and vegetable productions, have
been found. . . . The most interesting object, how-
ever, which have been brought to light are the handiworks
of man. While one of Mr Clark's workmen was employed
breaking up the large pieces of chalk which had been dug
up from the quarry into smaller portions, for the purpose
of being burnt into lime,he was somewhat startled on taking
up one of the pieces to find that it bore upon it a striking
but rudely sculptured human face. This figure was found
among the chalk which had come from a depth of 30 feet
and corresponded in character and appearance with the
chalk among which it was found. It presents the appear-
ance of age, and of having been in the earth for a great
length of time. . . . This discovery was soon followed
by a still more interesting relic being brought to light under
the same circumstances, This article appears to have been
a model for casting a fibula or brooch. It is neatly and
clearly executed in chalk, and is circular, running off in a
band or strap, ornamented with lozenge-shaped figures. It
is larger than a crown-piece, and in an indented or concave
border is an inscription in antique characters. The words
when written at length are, ' Jhesus Rex trudceortiln tniBe •
rere,' which may be rendered ' Jesus, King of the Jews,
have mercy upon me.' There is no question about this
being a genuine production of the period to which it belongs
—about the middle of the 15th century." The incon-
gruity of the above statement, and the utter impossibility
that any traces of man or his work should be contained in
the chalk, one of the secondary rocks and a marine formation
induced an inquiry at Driffield on Monday last. for the pur-
pose of finding out, if possible, what really was the nature
of those discoveries. At Driffield, after inspecting the
quarry, which certainly presents a breastwork fully 30 feet
high, the whole of the three remarkable discoveries men-
tioned in the above extracts were found to have been made by
one man, a quarryman. This man was very willing to give
information of the wonderful things ho had found. The
human hand, he asserts, came out of the solid rock ; but on
close inquiry he admitted that it was jointed, and that on
being handled the joints fell asunder. It became clear enough
that the so-called human hand was nothing more or less
than one of the common ecrals found in the chalk, but had
evidently been rather more digitate than is usual. In like
manner, the only solution to bo arrived at about the
" fossil bones" was that the ordinary baculites and be-
lernnites of the chalk fossils had been so called. The human
face, the man protested, came out of a solid mass of chalk.
This face was produced at the residence of the owner of
the pit, and it is assuredly nothing more than a very
bad attempt to carve a figurehead in the soft chalk by
some workman who has practised sculpture with a pocket-
knife. The best solution is one offered by Mr Brown, of
Driffield, a gentleman who has paid much attention to anti-
quarian matters in the locality, that this wonderful face has
been carved by some amateur sculptor on the face of the
rock, which had fallen in as the excavation had progressed.
It was quite certain that, so far from being of vast age, it
had never known a winter's frost, The "find," too, it ap-
peared, was some months old.
The chalk model is now
held by Mr Brown,