By Tom Burgess, Esq., F.S.A. 307 



soraevrhat intimate knowledge of the subject. I feel that I owe 

 this explanation to the people of Devizes, and if in my preliminary- 

 remarks, I may touch on what appears to be trite and known sub- 

 jects to the veteran archaeologists whom I see around me, they will 

 probably excuse me, as it is a necessary prelude to the particular 

 subject of my remarks. 



On Wednesday evening as I listened to my friend, Mr. Brock's 

 description of the Viking's Ship, in which he was, as usual, as exact 

 as he was eloquent, I could not help recalling to mind the old Saxon 

 poem of Beowulf, in which the old chieftain wished to be buried on 

 the nose of some promontory, so that his funeral mound might be 

 at once a landmark and a tomb, a grave and. a living memorial of 

 the dead. If we could only realise this grand notion of the old 

 sea king being ready at the final day to go forth to sea at the call 

 of his gods to fight and to conquer, we should realise to a greater 

 extent than at present the reason why so many instruments and 

 weapons of war were buried with their owner's remains, and of 

 which so many beautiful specimens are preserved in your valuable 

 and excellent museum. 



It is not, however, of these ancient warriors I am about to speak, 

 but of the earthworks they built to defend their dwelling places, 

 and the mounds they left behind them. It is but proper to speak 

 reverently of these in the county of Wilts, for there is probably no 

 other county in England which presents so many features of interest 

 to the student of the past as the county which has given us so warm 

 a welcome this week. It is replete with so many memories — is 

 studded with so many monuments of the old fathers of the land, as 

 to ofier an almost unrivalled field for the research and the study of 

 antiquity. There is scarcely a headland or a hillock that rises above 

 the grassy slopes of the Wiltshire Downs that has not some remains 

 to indicate the old inhabitants — fastnesses in which they kept their 

 household treasures, or barrows in which they buried their dead. 

 On the one hand you see those mysterious circles which are supposed 

 to indicate their temples, and on the other the far-stretching dykes 

 which seem to say to the neighbouring tribes, " Thus far shalt thou 

 go and no further." In front of the great Wansdyke, and nearly 



