288 Inaugural Address by the President of the Society, 
be discovered or examined hereafter. Of these there were probably 
a considerable number in the same neighbourhood, Within a radius 
of six or seven miles from Rushmore I have counted twelve or 
thirteen places in which Roman remains had been found, some of 
them apparently villages of equal size to those above-mentioned, 
and, judging by my experience at Woodyates, there were probably 
several more which may have been entirely destroyed by cultivation. 
In fact, this district, which is now very sparsely imhabited, was in 
Roman times a very populous one. This may have been partly 
owing to the fact that at a time when so much of the country was 
in forest the people were obliged to live in the open downlands, that 
are now comparatively deserted. But this is hardly sufficient to 
account for such a great concentration of Romano-British people in 
this district, towards the close of the Roman occupation. We must 
look to the effects of wars and invasions as a cause for the density 
of the population at that time. 
These considerations make it important that we should endeavour 
to ascertain what connection existed between these villages and the 
great military earthworks of the neighbourhood, such a number of 
which are shown on the ancient map of the district that I have 
made.! 
I have frequently heard observations made upon this subject 
which appear to me, from a military point of view, to be erroneous. 
The isolated camps, with which the map is studded, which—though 
called camps—were in reality permanent fortifications, are sometimes 
spoken of as having been thrown up for the defence of a particular 
district. But, apart from the fact that they are pretty evenly dis- 
tributed over the country, occupying the most elevated positions as 
they happen to occur, and not in lines drawn along the frontier of 
any particular part, there is reason to doubt whether such detached 
fortresses could, in those days, have served the purpose of defending 
a district. In modern times we erect fortresses on the frontiers of 
1This map was exhibited at the Meeting, and will be reproduced in the third p 
quarto volume of excavations, giving detailed plans and sections of all the ex- — 
cavations, with illustrations of the objects discovered in Woodyates. 
