EEMAEKS UPON THE ENTRENCHMENT OF THE 

 WALL HILLS, NEAH LEDBURY. 



Bt EDWIN LEES, F.L.S., F.G.S., &c. 



From the sublimities of geological research and the depositions of ages 

 past, almost too remote for imagination to contemplate, it seems a revulsion 

 from the grand to the insignificant to turn to the petty relics left by savage 

 tribes upon the ground they once occupied. Milton has stated that any account 

 of the turmoils and contentions of barbarous tribes in remote times was little 

 better than would be a history of the quarrelUng of kites and crows, or the 

 snarUng of the wild beasts of the forest. But if the indistinct markings left 

 in the sand of a former seashore by marine-worms, or the ripple-marks in 

 stony strata of tides that have ceased to flow, though once mighty in their 

 actions, are seized upon by geologists in proof of paleozoic Ufe, where aU is now 

 dead and petrified, so the Aich^ologist is entitled to look with interest on 

 those notches in the soil which mark the treads of human feet in times when 

 the pen of history had not commenced its chronicles. Even conjecture is almost 

 at fault when adverting to 



" Antient times so long forgot. 

 Of feuds whose memory is not ; 

 To manners long since changed and gone. 

 And chiefs who under the grey stone 

 So long have slept, that fickle fame 

 Has blotted from her scroll their name." 

 The geologist looks upon the materials of the hills before they rose 

 into their present shape, and the antiquary marks the hills with equal curiosity, 

 as he sees there traces of the first labours of man in community, whether the 

 trenches on the uplands were formed for protection from wUd animals, who 

 then held the supremacy ot the country, or whether tribes hostUe to each other 

 defended the ground against pillage and outrage. 



In every country abandoned mounds and trenches meet the eye and awake 

 the curiosity of the investigator. The term Camp or Castrametation, has gene- 

 rally been applied to the fosses and terraces marked upon hill sides, though, in 

 aU cases, these defences were not strictly formed as military positions for 

 armed soldiery. Perhaps the majority were made for military purposes, as, 

 in ancient times, no army felt itself seciire without a defensive ditch, however 

 short their intended occupation ; while many of these systems of fosse and 

 vallum encompassing heights were occupied as permanent fortresses. Where 



