250 THE LATE LIEUT. -GENERAL PITT-RIVERS. 



These volumes, descriptive of the Cranborne Chase explorations, are 

 most useful books of reference and exponents of the value of apparently 

 insignificant relics in providing material for tilling in the missing pages of our 

 history. Nothing perhaps of their kind have been so thorough and so com- 

 pletely successful. The systematic care with which these researches were 

 carried out, the exact record of facts and absence of hastily drawn conclusions 

 are apparent from the books themselves, but only those who have actually 

 worked with General Pitt-Rivers can appreciate to the full how faithfully he 

 maintained the high standard he had set himself in these records, and how 

 steadily he refused to strain facts to fit preconceived hypotheses however 

 tempting they might appear. The present writer can fully testify to this, 

 having had the honour, during several years, to assist in these researches. No 

 discrepency, no error, was tolerated. "A mistake," he would exclaim, " what 

 is a mistake ? In my profession Sir, a mistake is looked upon as a crime and 

 that is the idea I wish to inculcate in you." The importance of exactitude in 

 minor things was no doubt the more necessary where the evidence was often 

 of so blight a nature. Doubtless these works, in addition to their value as 

 books of reference, will exert a beneficial influence on future explorations, as 

 showing the importance of exact record of objects that appear in themselves 

 so little deserving of notice. 



Gough in his History 0/ Curausins remarks " The science of antiquities 

 has been involved in the systematical fatality of the age. Every research 

 after truth has degenerated into contest for an hypothesis. Of all enquirers 

 after it antiquarians, to whose discoveries some deference is presumed to be 

 due, should quarrel least. Much less should they substitute fancy and 

 imagination to that fiction and obscurity they labour to banish." 



This desire to state only established and supported facts was a quality 

 possessed by the General in a very high degree, and he proportionately 

 despised those who speculate with insufficient data. " We are not without 

 our Stukeleys at the present time, when the progress of science has lessened 

 the excuse for us," he remarked in his address to the Royal Archaeological 

 Institute. 



As characteristic of this love of truth there is a tale the villagers of 

 Tollard Roval delight to relate, how the Parson attempted in a sermon, at 

 which the General was present, to distort science to fit some passage of 

 Scripture, which extorted from him the emphatic protest of " That is a lie!" 



There was never any desire to jump at conclusions; he was always 

 prepared to wait quietly until all the evidence had been collected, before 

 formulating any generalisation. Alluding to this subject he says:— " I think 

 it undesirable to give expression to theories which one may afterwards feel 

 one's self committed to, as the investigation goes on " and again " I have often 

 noticed in mv younger sporting days and it is a fact well known to sportsmen, 

 that some hounds are apt to give tongue before they have got a true scent, 

 whilst there are others whose voice can be relied upon. I am an old dog and 

 have always had a disposition to run mute." 



It is this system, by which the record of a plain statement of just what 

 was found, unmixed with immature theorising, that gives such value to the 

 Cranbourne Chase volumes for those who may in future pursue this line of 

 archaeological enquiry, i.e., the history of the Early British Village. For 

 although there will be found the record of numerous barrows, the Anglo-Saxon 



