Ixxviii. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



white men's influence, such as the Australians and neighbour- 

 ing nations. The Andaman Islanders appear to have suffered 

 in this way, as their numbers in two groups of islands are 

 now reduced to 455 out of about 3,500 in 1858, when British 

 occupation began. Those by whom civilisation has not yet 

 been adopted, however, still survive and flourish. 



ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHEOLOGY. 



The excavations at Maumbury Rings being now finished, 

 the Earthworks Committee of our Club proposes this year to 

 turn its attention to the Dewlish Elephant Trench, a great 

 part of which was explored in 1888 by our late President, 

 Mr. Mansel-Pleydell, whose finds of tusks and other portions 

 of Elephas meridionalis, a gigantic elephant standing 17 feet 

 high, are in our Dorset Museum. [See Proc. D.F.C. X., 1.] 

 This proposal originated from a suggestion that the trench 

 was of artificial formation and made by prehistoric man as a 

 trap to catch elephants ; but the evidence of this is so far 

 confined, I believe, to the finding of a few so-called eoliths, 

 which may or may not be of natural formation and could have 

 but little weight in deciding the question. Geologically, 

 doubtless, the excavation will prove of interest. To revert 

 to Maumbury, one of the results that seemed to me of most 

 importance was shewn in last year's work by the discovery 

 that on the East side, just inside the bank, was a series 

 of prehistoric pits, similar and similarly placed to those 

 previously discovered under the opposite bank. The natural 

 and almost unavoidable conclusion is that the present banks, 

 or rather others on which these were raised, were made in con- 

 nection with the pits. As to what the connection was, and 

 what was the exact object of the pits, it is difficult to say. 

 The theory that they were excavations for the purpose of 

 obtaining flints seems to me insufficient on account of their 

 number and regular formation, when one ordinary quarry 

 would have afforded a much larger supply of flints with far 

 less work. The theory of storage or hiding places appears 



