32 



a skeleton map of the district traced from Teesdale's larger map, 

 the remains of each race being inscribed in ink of a different 

 colour. From time to time returns should be made from each 

 district, and registered on a map of the whole county, preserved 

 in some central spot like the Museum at York. 



The permanent assemblage in one collection of all antiquities 

 thus found is as essential to the advancement of Archaeology, as 

 a scientific arrangement of fossils is to Geology : in the latter 

 study the self-denying liberality of private collectors has done 

 much for the formation of public Museums, and it is hoped that 

 archaeologists will not be less mindful of the true interests of 

 knowledge by contributing antiquities to one common stock, 

 instead of isolating specimens, prized because rare, but of no real 

 value unless generally accessible for purposes of comparison and 

 combination. 



If the suggestions here offered be thought worthy to be put 

 into execution, I should hope that a very few years of survey, 

 registration, and classification, would lead to a far more accurate 

 knowledge not only of the condition of British and Roman York- 

 shire, but of the whole British race before and after the Roman 

 conquest. 



It is surely not an uninteresting or trifling labour to seek to 

 know what was the precise social condition of our savage ances- 

 tors ; whether at the time of the Roman invasion, the hunter, 

 the shepherd, and the agricultural mode of life prevailed among 

 them simultaneously, in what relative proportions in the whole 

 population, and according to what differences of climate and soil ; 

 what progress they had made towards permanent social improve- 

 ment at the moment of contact with exotic civilization ; what 

 they gained and what they lost from their conquerors ; how far 

 the benefits of social order maintained by the strong arm of the 

 empire compensated for the loss of independence and the corrup- 

 tion of the manly virtue of the savage ; what tribes retained 

 their native ideas and mode of life longest, whether through 

 greater natural strength of character, or from the circumstance 

 of inhabiting a more inaccessible district. 



It is by the patient examination of the military works, dwell- 

 ings, places of sepulture, and works of art of the primeval period. 



