CASTLE NEROCHE. 29 
Enstle Heroche. 
BY THE REV. F. WARRE. 
HE extreme remoteness of the period during which 
the nations flourished to which the constructors of 
our mysterious hill forts and other earthworks belonged— 
nations of whom it has been truly said that their political 
existence terminated nearly at the time when the written 
history of this country commences—must necessarily 
render all investigations into their history, customs, 
residences and fortifications, dificult and uncertain, and 
the deductions drawn from them inconclusive and unsatis- 
factory. And yet it is impossible to see these vestiges of 
byegone races—stupendous temples, as at Sonehenge and 
Avebury; monuments of unknown meaning, such as Silbury; 
barrows without number scattered over our downs and 
hills, containing the bones of forgotten nations ; hut circles 
marking the sites of their towns and villages, in which the 
antiquary finds traces of domestie life in fragments of 
coarse pottery, rude ornaments and ruder weapons;; strong- 
holds, in some cases displaying a degree of science hardly 
compatible with our ideas of their barbarism, and skeletons, 
the unmistakeable relics in some cases of desperate battle, 
