544 



NATURE 



\Oct. 4, 1888 



making in all thirty-six which have been placed under the 

 Act with the consent of their owners. All these and many 

 others have been surveyed ; plans, drawings, and sections have 

 been made of them, which are contained in the book now upon 

 the table, which is open for the inspection of the members. I 

 hope to publish these shortly. Besides these monuments which 

 are included under the Act, a good deal of useful work has been 

 done by communicating with the owners of other monuments, 

 without using the Act. 



I think it speaks well for the landowners that so many should 

 have been willing to accept the Act, considering that so few of 

 them take much interest in antiquities. There is not a more 

 public-spirited body in the world than the much-abused 

 landowners of England. 



Those who have refused have generally done so on the grounds 

 that they wish to remain responsible for their own monument.", 

 and I think I may say, from my own observations, that there is 

 very little damage to prehistoric monuments going on at the 

 present time. Public opinion has done more than any Act of 

 Parliament could do, and it appears to me that it is generally 

 known throughout the country that any wilful damage to the 

 monuments would be universally condemned. 



But it is well to consider the operation of the Act, and how 

 it may be improved. The provision which makes it illegal, 

 ever after, to destroy the monuments that are now placed under 

 the Act by their owners, and to enable magistrates to punish 

 offenders summarily, appears to me excellent, and worthy to be 

 retained. But there are defects to which it would be well to 

 give attention. By the present Act, the Government are made 

 responsible for all the monuments that are included, which 

 entails expense ; and as members of Parliament generally take 

 very little interest in ancient monuments, and the great object 

 of the Government must always be to curtail expenditure, 

 additions to the list are not as a rule encouraged. ■ 



I last year obtained eleven new monuments, but I was told 

 that this was too many, and that some must be omitted, so I 

 selected three of the least important, and they have not been 

 included. This, 1 think, is objectionable ; the two provisions 

 of the Act which I have mentioned should be applied as widely 

 as possible. If the provision making Government responsible 

 for the preservation of the whole of them is altered, there will 

 be no inducement on the part of the authorities to reduce the 

 number to be included. At present local archaeologists wash 

 their hands of the matter, thinking that there is a Government 

 Inspector whose business it is to look after the monuments. 

 This is a mistake ; the proper function of the Inspector is 

 simply to look after the monuments that are included, and to 

 advise the Commissioners— not to obtain new monuments for 

 the Act. I have done so because I was charged in a special 

 manner with the organization and working of the Act on its first 

 introduction, but it is beyond the proper functions of the 

 Inspector. I have done it as a private individual who takes an 

 interest in the subject, and any other private individual may do 

 the same. Moreover, it is impossible for an Inspector to stand 

 sentry over all the monuments that are put under the Act. The 

 police are requested to look after them as well as they can, but 

 damage must occasionally be done which local archaeologists 

 are in a better position to ascertain and to remedy, using the 

 provisions of the Act for the purpose. 



It may be that my position as a landowner, as Lord Stalbridge 

 said in his letter asking me to take the appointment, may have had 

 some effect in enabling me to persuade some of the other land- 

 owners, but you cannot insure always having a landowner for 

 an Inspector, and it is desirable now to put the Act on a working 

 footing. It is much to be wished that local Archaeological 

 Societies should be made to feel themselves responsible both for 

 the inclusion of monuments under the Act, and their preserva- 

 tion afterwards ; the Act arms them with full powers for the 

 purpose if they think proper to use it. 



At present no Archaeological Society has rendered any assist- 

 ance whatever, but Sir Herbert Maxwell, in Galloway, has not. 

 only offered his own monuments, he has persuaded his neigh- 

 bours to do the same. What Sir Herbert Maxwell can do, 

 others equally public -spirited can do also, if it is clearly under- 

 stood that it rests wuh them to take action in the matter, and I 

 think it should rest with them, because, being local, they can 

 do more than a single Inspector charged with the supervision of 

 the whole of the monuments of Great Britain. I think that the 

 Government should continue to appropriate a small sum (it is 

 now under .£200 a year) to apply to such purposes as may be 



thought desirable, such as building sheds to preserve the monu- 

 ments, but that they should not necessarily be held responsible 

 for all the monuments placed under the Act, and that, the Bill 

 being a permissive one, it should rest with the public to make 

 use of it or not, as they may think proper. If there is no demand 

 for the preservation of monuments, there is no reason why the 

 country should be saddled with the expense of it. If there is a 

 demand, let those who are interested use the law on the subject 

 as they use any other to prosecute delinquents. I think, also, 

 the provision that the new monuments before being included 

 should rest forty days before Parliament might be advantageously 

 abolished. The First Commissioner, with the practical know- 

 ledge of the Inspector, is fully competent to decide upon the 

 monuments to be included. It is evident that, if it were desired 

 to save any monument that might be threatened, the forty days 

 would afford ample time to enable the destruction to be carried 

 out before the Act could be applied. With these alterations I 

 think the Act would take root in the country and produce better 

 results. Of one thing, however, I feel certain : that, as long as 

 the owner of a monument takes an interest in it, he is the best 

 person that the public can look to for the preservation of it. 



In conclusion it may perhaps interest the meeting if I say a 

 few words upon the results of my recent excavations on the 

 borders of Dorset and Wilts, upon which I have been at work 

 for the last eight years, the detailed account of which is recorded 

 in the two quarto volumes extending to 541 pages and 159 plates, 

 the last of which is just completed. 



I have excavated numerous barrows of the Bronze Age near 

 Rushmore, about half-way between Salisbury and Blandford. 

 Winkelbury Camp has been examined and sections cut through 

 the ramparts ; an Anglo-Saxon cemetery near it has been dug 

 out, and two Romano-British villages thoroughly explored, the 

 positions of which are shown on the map now exhibited on the 

 walls, a reduced facsimile of which is given on p. 545. 



In recording these excavations I have acted on the principle 

 that views upon anthropological subjects are constantly on the 

 change, as our imperfect knowledge of the early inhabitants of 

 the country increases, and that when the records of excavations 

 are confined to opinions and results, it is probable that those 

 facts only which coincide with the theories current at the time 

 receive the prominence they deserve. 



The requirements of the future demand that everything should 

 be recorded and tabulated in such a way as to be of easy access 

 hereafter. I have therefore established a system of relic tables in 

 which, without confusing the text and making it unreadable, every 

 object, however small and apparently trivial, is inserted, and the 

 great majority of them are figured in the plates. 



It would occupy too much time to enter into details on the 

 present occasion. The result has been to show by a computation 

 from the bones of twenty-eight individuals, found buried in pits in 

 the villages, that the Romanized Britons of this district were an 

 exceedingly small race, having an average stature of not more than 

 5 feet 2 '6 inches for the males, and 4 feet io"9 inches for the 

 females ; that the tallest man was only 5 feet 7 '8 inches, and he 

 was an inch and a half taller than the next tallest man. 



In head form, the great majority of twenty-six skeletons 

 measured were mesaticephalic and mostly coffin-shaped, but 

 three were hyper-dolichocephalic and two brachycephalic, 

 which shows that the head form approached that of the 

 Neolithic, long-barrow people, with a probable admixture of 

 either Roman or Bronze Age types. 



The stature is slightly less than that given by Thurnam for the 

 long-barrow people of this district, but Dr. Garson informs me 

 that, in a paper which he will read at this meeting, he will show 

 that the height of the Romano-Britains whom I have discovered 

 tallies as nearly as possible with that of some long-barrow 

 bones found near Devizes. All are, of course, shorter than the 

 skeletons of the Bronze Age, two of which I have found in 

 the same locality, and which are of the usual tall stature and 

 round-headed types of that people. 



The Romano- Britons are also considerably shorter than the 

 skeletons of the Anglo-Saxons found in the cemetery at 

 Winkelbury, which are described in my second volume. 



The problem, therefore, with respect to these Romanized 

 Britons appears to be this : Are they the descendants of the 

 long-barrow people, and do they owe their small stature to 

 that circumstance, or is their small size to be attributed to their 

 largest men having been drafted away into the Roman legions 

 abroad ? 



