46 A STtfDY Off BOOKLET DYKE, A*f> OTHERS IJT DORSET. 



.the ground, and accompanied with very rudely fashioned imple- 

 ments and weapons of flint. This may mark, I think, a higher 

 grade of antiquity. But many of the barrows in Wilts and Dor- 

 set are perfectly alike in their construction and in their contents, 

 Cremation of the body is the rule in them all ; * inhumation 

 being subordinate, though both methods of disposing of the dead 

 were contemporaneous, being often found together. In 500 

 interments from the 160 Barrows alluded to in Mr. Warne's bock, 

 I have calculated that 63 per cent, were with cremation ; 36 per 

 cent, with simple inhumation. 



Both Keltse and Belgse were conquered by Vespasian, f 

 But these Brythonic or Keltic tribes, when they arrived on 

 our shores did not find an uninhabited country; it was 

 already peopled by another, if not two other races of much 

 higher antiquity than themselves. These were the Long-bar- 

 row folk, and the builders of the Stone monuments, monoliths, 

 circles, and cromlechs, who, taken together may he classified 

 as the people of our Stone Age, the Aborigines of our Island, 

 whose origin and advent are involved in profound 

 obscurity. Neither of these peoples, or races, seems to have 

 existed on our shores in large numbers, for our Long-barrows are 

 but few in the districts bordering the coast ; and the remains of 

 half a dozen Cromlechs, and as many stone circles and mono- 

 liths are all that bear testimony in our day to the existence of the 

 latter people. We must go into the Wilds cf Dartmoor, to 

 Cornwall, Wales and Brittany to know what these stone-builder s 

 were ; not forgetting, however, those grand circles at Avebury in 

 Wiltshire, presumably Druidical temples, and the cromlechs and 

 monoliths found there, where the land yields the requisite 

 material without necessitating the labour of quarrying. These 

 Stone-builders are usually denominated the Goidelic or Gaelic 



*This rule does not apply to the Long-barrows, in which evidence of cre- 

 mation is rare ; inhumation i the rule in them. 



t " Duas Validifsimas gentep. . in ditionem redeeit " 



Suet : 



Who were they if not thoee mentioned in the text ? 



