Dr Hibberfs Observations on Vitrified Forts. 293 



structures, showing no appearance whatever of the effects of 

 fire ; and that the number of such forts as displayed marks of 

 vitrification would be found inconsiderable, when compared with 

 those which have not been at all affected by heat. 



The same able writer also epiestions, with much propriety, 

 the capability of constructing an efficient fortress of vitrified 

 materials. He doubts whether it would be at all possible, even 

 at the present day, by the utmost combination of labour and 

 skill, to surround a large space of ground with a double ram- 

 part of stones compacted by fire, of such height and solidity as 

 to serve any purpose of security or defence against a besieging 

 enemy ; and concludes that any structure of this kind must 

 have been irregular, low, fragile, easily scaled, and quite 

 insecure. 



The hypothesis of Williams having been thus shown to be 

 perfectly unsatisfactory, Lord Woodhouselee next proposed 

 a theory of his own. It was suggested by the observations 

 which he made, that vitrified mounds do not appear to have 

 been ever much higher than they are at present ; that even in 

 those sites where the wall was the least elevated, the fragments 

 which have fallen down from it were very inconsiderable. His 

 Lordship was therefore led to suppose, that the ramparts which 

 now remain convey to us a full notion of the original construc- 

 tion of these forts, which was not of stones only, but which 

 depended for their chief defence upon the wood which was 

 employed in their fabric. He supposed that the building was 

 begun by raising a double row of palisades, or strong stakes, 

 in the form of the intended structure, in the same way as in 

 that ancient mode of building, described by Palladio, under 

 the name of Riempiuta or a Cassa, coffer-work ; — that these 

 stakes were probably warped across by boughs of trees laid 

 very closely together, so as to form two fences, running parallel 

 to each other at the distance of some feet, and so close as to 

 confine all the materials, of whatever size they might be, that 

 were thrown in between them ; — and that into this intermediate 

 space were cast boughs and trunks of trees, earth, and stones 

 of all sizes, large or small, as fast as they could be quarried or 

 collected ; very little care being necessary in the disposition of 



