Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/121

Rh volume recording the explorations is that it "may probably have been also for the passage of cattle." But what kind of cattle would a passage 170 feet wide have been wanted for? We may perhaps fall back on the conjecture that General Pitt-Rivers himself made in the preceding volume concerning gaps in Bokerly Dyke and Wansdyke, that they were filled by abattis of felled trees. Even then we are equally puzzled to know why an abattis should have been adopted to complete the enclosure.

The volume concludes with an account of the excavation of a Romano-British trench of irregular shape and unknown use at Rushmore, and an elaborate discussion of the distribution of Chevron patterns on pottery, comprising bibliographical references to the records of other finds in this country and abroad of similar patterns, which will be of much service to archæologists.

General Pitt-Rivers must be once more heartily congratulated on the results of his labours and his munificence. No service equal to his explorations, and the four volumes in which they are recorded, has been rendered to archaeology in the British Isles. The students whom he has laid under so great a debt will ardently unite in the hope that his health and strength may long be preserved to continue the work. It is no exaggeration to say that the precision of his methods and the exhaustive minuteness of his researches will be a standard and a model for all future explorers. They have already added enormously to our knowledge of the lives of our predecessors; and it is only from diggings carried on in the same spirit that we can expect to recover the earlier history and the pre-history of the country.

has of late produced a number of excellent monographs on romantic and popular literature, monographs in which the national gifts of lucid and orderly exposition are conspicuous.