66 Description of the Opening of a 
Amongst the ashes under the earthen cooking vessels there were 
six singular egg-shaped nodules of burnt clay, about an inch-and- 
a-half long, probably used as sling-stones. Mr J. Evans has 
kindly presented to the museum one of the sling-stones now in use 
among the inhabitants of New Caledonia. It is made of steatite, 
or soap-stone, and admirably illustrates the burnt clay missiles 
found in the dwelling-pit at Beckhampton. Similar sling-stones 
are still in use among many savage nations, and can, by the practised 
hand, be thrown with great precision, as mentioned in Judges, 
chap. xx., verse 16:—“ Among the tribe of Benjamin there were 
seven hundred chosen men, left-handed; every one could sling stones 
at an hair breadth, and not miss.” 
Mr. Cunnington, in page 84 of “ Ancient Wiltshire,” says :— 
“We have undoubted proof from history and from existing remains, 
that the earliest habitations were pits or slight excavations in the 
ground, covered and protected from the inclemencies of the weather 
by boughs of trees or sods of turf. The high grounds were pointed 
out by Nature as the fittest for these early settlements, being less 
encumbered with wood, and affording a better pasture for the nu- 
merous flocks and herds from which the erratic tribes of the first 
colonists drew their means of subsistence; but after the conquest of 
our island by the Romans, when, by means of their enlightened 
knowledge, society became more civilized, the Britons began to 
quit the elevated ridge of chalk hills, and seek more sheltered and 
desirable situations. At first we find them removed into the sandy 
vales immediately bordering on the chalk hills. At a later period, 
when the improved state of society under the Romans insured them 
security, the valleys were cleared of wood, and towns and villages 
were erected in the plains, near rivers, which, after the departure of 
the Romans, became the towns of the Saxons. But a considerable 
period must have elapsed before these important changes took 
place; for on our bleakest hills we find the luxuries of the Romans 
introduced into the British settlements, flues, hypocausts, stuecoed 
and painted vases, &c., &e. Yet not a single inscription has ever 
yet been discovered, in any one of the British dwellings that might 
throw some positive light upon the era in which they flourished, 
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