290 OGBUEY BAKROWS 



married Adeliza, daughter and heiress of Sir Ralph de 

 Thingumbob, and had issue thirteen stalwart sons and 

 twenty-seven beautiful daughters, each founders of a noble 

 family with a correspondingly varied pedigree. Finally, 

 you take tea and ices upon somebody's lawn, by special 

 invitation, and drive home, not without much laughter, in 

 the cool of the evening to an excellent table d'hote dinner 

 at the marvellously cheap hotel, presided over by the ever- 

 smiling and urbane secretary. That is what we mean now- 

 adays by being a member of an archaeological association. 



It was on just such a pleasant excursion that we all 

 went to Ogbury Barrows. I was overflowing, myself, with 

 bottled-up information on the subject of those two pre- 

 historic tumuli ; for Ogbury Barrows have been the hobby 

 of my lifetime ; but I didn't read a paper upon their origin 

 and meaning, first, because the secretary very happily for- 

 got to ask me, and secondly, because I was much better 

 employed in psychological research into the habits and 

 manners of an extremely pretty pink-and-white archaeo- 

 logist who stood beside me. Instead, therefore, of boring 

 her and my other companions with all my accumulated 

 store of information about Ogbury Barrows, I locked it up 

 securely in my own bosom, with the fell design of finally 

 venting it all at once in one vast flood upon the present 

 article. 



Ogbury Barrows, I would have said (had it not been for 

 the praiseworthy negligence of our esteemed secretary), 

 stand upon the very verge of a great chalk-down, over- 

 looking a broad and fertile belt of valley, whose slopes are 

 terraced in the quaintest fashion with long parallel lines of 

 obviously human and industrial origin. The terracing 

 must have been done a very long time ago indeed, for it is 

 a device for collecting enough soil on a chalky hillside to 

 grow corn in. Now, nobody ever tried to grow corn on 



