908 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 



plates were attached to the masonry of the walls. As for 

 the shower of gold which enabled Danse's lover to approach 

 her, it is simply a synonym for the golden key which will 

 unlock the deepest dungeon. 



These structures were probably all built to serve as treasure 

 tombs, and are far older than the rectangular flat-roofed 

 buildings of Homer's time, to which they appear to have no 

 relation ; yet in distant countries having no historical con- 

 nection with Greece we find similar buildings, as the stone 

 beehive huts of Upper Burmah and the Pict's houses of 

 Scotland. 



Now let us trace the earliest attainable records of the 

 circular hut. 



In the ancient necropolis cut through in the time of Cicero 

 by the engineers employed under the tribune Clodius in 

 laying out the road through Alba Longa, a necropolis which, 

 even at that remote date, had been buried for unknown ages 

 under the tufas of the extinct volcano of Mont Albano, are 

 found cremation vases containing terra cotta models of the 

 departed, Avith their furniture, tools, and houses, the type of 

 house being the circular or slightly elliptical domed hut, the 

 early type of the form which has prevailed with slight altera- 

 tion through a large portion of the world to the present 

 day. The walls batter slightly inwards. The doorway is 

 trapezoidal in shape, and there are two openings over it in 

 the roof for the double purpose of admitting light and 

 emitting smoke, whilst the thatch of the domed roof is kept 

 in place by forked tree roots, an arrangement which we find 

 copied as an unmeaning ornament in the curved roofs of 

 Lower Bengal at the present day. 



Is it too much to suppose that in these terra cottas we 

 have before us the material representation of the original 

 house, the " tholos,'^ the " hearth dome," of a far-distant 

 age ? Was this the form of the hut of Romulus, religiously 

 kept for so many centuries in the Capitol at Rome ? 



That the use of this fot-m was widespread is shown by the 

 cremation urns dug up from time to time in Germany, but 

 known by the name of " house-urns." They are copied 

 from the same type, but are ruder in execution, the door with 

 its wicker bolt so carefully modelled in the Mont Albano 

 examples giving way to a simple lid with holes, by which it 

 was tied on to the pot, probably with leather thongs. 



Going northward from Rome we find the circular form of 



