290 Inaugural Address by the President of the Society, 
erected, the hill-forts within the area defended by them were no 
longer of any use. They might have been occupied afterwards, as 
we know they were occupied in Roman times, but they were no 
longer erected, except on a small scale on the lines of march of the 
Roman armies, or as places of support for the continuous lines of 
entrenchment. The inhabitants of the district, secured in the 
peaceable occupation of their villages by these frontier defences, had 
no longer any occasion to fortify their homes. Now the villages 
that I have described, although some of them might have been 
surrounded by slight banks and stockades, as a precaution against 
wolves, or against casual marauders, were to all intents and purposes 
open villages. They were the habitations of people who felt secure 
in their positions, and I think that, for the reasons I have given, it 
is reasonable, on a prior? grounds, to expect that such villages would 
be found to be associated in point of time with the continuous en- 
trenchments. Dr. Guest, in his well-known paper on what he terms 
“the Belgic Ditches,’ appears to me to be perfectly right in 
assuming that these continuous entrenchments must necessarily 
have been the work of a people in a higher condition of civilization, 
to secure their territory against the depredations of an inferior 
people, in a lower condition of Jife. . But, whether he is right in 
adopting Stukeley’s opinion that these superior people were Belge 
is a question which I am not prepared either to accept or to deny, 
without better evidence. It is open to doubt whether the Belgz 
invaded the country in a body, or in driblets, and whether they were 
so far in advance of the aborigines as to have adopted a totally 
different method of warfare. From what little we do know about 
them they appear to have been rather in the hill-fort stage of 
organisation, like the Atrebates, Dobuni, Durotridges, and other 
tribes, by which they were surrounded. 
_ These were my views at the time that I approached the question 
of the origin of Bokerly Dyke, though I did not care to publish 
my opinions, because I think it is always undesirable to give ex- 
pression to theories which one may afterwards feel one’s self committed 
to as the investigation goes on. I am now in a position to speak 
of these views as proved up to a certain point, and I am assured of 
