68 THE PROBLEM OF LYNCHETS. 



they can be distinguished from pre-Aryan lynchets, with their 

 almost perpendicular banks, which began at the top of the 

 decUvity, immediately around the hill fortress, and crept, terrace 

 by terrace, down the environing slopes. "These terraces," he 

 proceeds, " were artificially formed with faces of stone or flint 

 by a race of hill-folk, who expended upon the construction 

 stupendous labour." 



On this it may be remarked that the hill fortresses of Dorset 

 were pastoral, and were used on occasion to protect multitudes 

 of sheep or cattle from the passing onslaught of raiders. It is 

 unlikely that the same race of men, who were large holders of 

 livestock, for which extensive grazing ground would be required, 

 should at the same time be laborious agricultural spade-workers, 

 destroying their own pasturage. Caesar said of the Britons, that 

 they did not sow corn, but lived on milk and flesh, and clothed 

 themselves with skins, and that the number of their cattle 

 was very great (De Bell. Gall. V. xiv. xii.). And Strabo 

 declared that they were totally unacquainted with horticulture 

 and other matters of husbandry, that they enclosed an ample 

 space with felled trees, where they made themselves huts and 

 lodged their cattle, though not for any long continuance 

 (IV. v.). 



It may be remarked further that the lynchets of Dorset, as we 

 now see them, do not surround and spread out from hill 

 fortresses. On the contrary, lynchets of the cultivation type are 

 seldom to be found very near to these great pastoral camps, 

 though they may abound on hill slopes at a distance. At the 

 same time it is obvious that any natural terraces, however slight 

 originally, must by degrees have become in pastoral districts 

 greatly exaggerated by the constant treading for thousands of 

 years of countless flocks and herds. Again, the steepest 

 lynchets are to be found in the lowest valleys ; and, lastly, of all 

 the terraces that, so far, have been cut through or otherwise 

 examined in this county not one shows any retaining wall either 

 of stone or of flints. 



