THE LATE LIEUT. -GENERAL PITT RIVERS. 249 



daughter of the first lord. He was bound by the terms of the will to take the 

 arms and name of Pitt-Rivers. This property, situated on the southern 

 slopes of the Wiltshire downs, has owing to a combination of favourable 

 circumstances, preserved intact the many ancient remains with which it 

 abounds. Agriculture which has obliterated such antiquities in most parts, 

 has, in consequence of the poverty of the soil, done little to disturb the 

 original character of these monuments of the past in the neighbourhood of 

 Rushmore. A large portion of the estate also has been saved from disturb- 

 ance, by the existence of Cranborne Chase, a part of the original forest of the 

 country, which was formerly protected by special laws, that forbade the con- 

 version of the land into arable. It seems singularly appropriate that one with 

 such acquirements and experience, should have succeeded to this estate. Gen. 

 Pitt-Rivers himself says in the preface of the first volume of his researches in 

 this district :-" I had an ample harvest before me and with the particular 

 tastes that I had cultivated, it almost seemed to me as if some unseen hand 

 had trained me up to be the possessor of such a property, which up to within 

 a short time of my inheriting it I had little reason to expect." 



The health of the General was at this time giving way and while probably 

 he would have been precluded from carrying out such work in distant spots 

 he was able at Rushmore to continuously and systematically pursue these 

 explorations with the great advantages derived from permanent residence in a 

 district. 



The record of this later work is contained in four handsome 

 volumes, copies of which the Essex Field Club library is, through the 

 generosity of the General, fortunate enough to possess. Some critics have 

 quarrelled with the great elaboration and detail of these works. The author, 

 however, considered it better to err on the side of redundancy, noting 

 much that may appear insignificant to us at present, but which may at some 

 future time of more developed knowledge in these matters prove to be 

 valuable historic evidence. He himself says in the introduction to Vol. I. : — 

 " It will, perhaps, be thought by some that I have recorded the excavation of 

 this village [Woodcuts] and the finds that have been made in it with un- 

 necessary fulness, and I am aware that 1 have done it in greater detail than 

 has been customary but my experience as an excavator has led nie to think 

 that investigations of this nature are not generally sufficiently searching, and 

 that much valuable evidence is lost by omitting to record them carefully." 



" Excavators, as a rule, record only those things which appear to them 

 important at the time, but fresh problems in Archaeology and Anthropologv 

 are constantly arising, and it can hardly fail to have escaped the notice of 

 anthropologists, especially those who, like myself, have been concerned with 

 the morphology of art, that, on turning back to old accounts in search of evid- 

 ence, the points which wcjuld have beea most valuable have been passed over 

 from being thought uninteresting at the time." 



The spirit which actuated the General in his researches was solely the 

 genuine scientific idea of gaining historic evidence and he had a most 

 healthy contempt for the spirit of relic grubbing and curiosity collecting. " In 

 my judgment," he says, "a fragment of pottery, if it throws light on the 

 history of our own country and people, is of more interest to the scientific 

 collector of evidence in England, than even a work of art and merit that is 

 associated only with races that we are ren-.o^ely conuected with." 



