!22 



NA rURE 



[February 2, 1905 



and no great demand is made upon the skill of the 

 cultivator who desires to try his fortune in this 

 direction. As regards the call upon his capital, some 

 idea of the cost of opening and maintaining a plant- 

 ation will be obtained from the estimates which the 

 author supplies, showing the expenditure in Ceylon 

 and the Malay Peninsula. As an alternative to tea- 

 planting, orange-growing, and cattle-ranching, the 

 production of rubber would seem to be well worth 

 consideration by young Britons who go abroad in 

 search of a competency. C. Simmonds. 



PREHISTORIC ENGLAND.' 

 A S this volume contains a notice by the publishers 

 -'*- that they " will shortly begin " the issue of the 

 series of "The Antiquary's Books," to which this 

 belongs, it may be assumed that it is the first. For 

 the reason that it is an earnest of the quality to be 

 expected in its successors, the book, both in manner 

 and matter, must be treated in somewhat more critical 

 and judicial fashion than if the series had been already 

 fairly launched. The responsibility of a publisher in 

 placing an antiquarian library before the public is 

 never light, and at the present time it suffers from the 

 inequality of modern knowledge in respect to the 

 various prehistoric and archaeological periods. The 

 later stages of the former class have vast floods of 

 light thrown upon them by the constantly recurring 

 discoveries in the Levant, and the comparative method 

 has enabled us to classify many of our native antiqui- 

 ties by their means. In regard to the earlier stages of 

 man's existence we are in the main still advancing at 

 a painfully slow rate, and can scarcely be held to have 

 more than a misty comprehension of the subject. 

 In historic times the same want of balance of know- 

 ledge exists equally, though it is a far easier task to 

 mask the difficulty, and to produce a nicely balanced 

 tale from groups of facts of very different values. 



The present volume deals only with the relics of 

 man in Britain anterior to the coming of the Roman 

 invaders, and in a sense, therefore, may be called 

 prehistoric, for nothing in the nature of a native record 

 can be quoted in support of any part of it. The author 

 ■fay his title, moreover, limits his field to the remains 



IFlG. I.— Sectic 



of Barrow w 



of the Prehistoric Age in England.' 



•of the dwellers in Britain, that is to say, to the monu- 

 ments they raised, the implements they made, and the 

 graves in which they deposited their dead. The racial 

 characteristics, as shown by the physical characters, 

 are treated very briefly, and the burning questions of 

 the priority of Brythons and Goidels in the land, of 

 the precise position of the Picts as an indigenous tribe, 

 ■of the succeeding immigrations from the Continent 

 bringing with them new types of people, of weapons, 

 or of burial customs, are only incidentally mentioned. 



By the elimination of all these questions Dr. Windle 

 has set himself an infinitely lighter task ; but it is to 

 1)6 questioned how far an intelligent reader can gain 



^ *' Remains of the Prehistoric Age in England." By Bertram C. A. 

 Windle, Sc.D., F.RS. Pp. xv + 320 ; illustrated. (London : Methuen 

 .^nd Co.) Price js. tti. net. 



NO. 1840, VOL. 71] 



a true understanding of the conditions described with- 

 out some fuller information on these points. It must 

 be confessed, however, that the subject bristles with 

 difficulties of all kinds and has tempting pitfalls for 

 even the wary searcher, and, on the other hand, Dr. 

 Windle has a right to set his own limits. Even 

 within these limits he may be thought somewhat 

 hardy, for to give an adequate account of all the 

 material relics of man in Britain from the dawn of 

 human life up to about 2000 years ago, within the 

 compass of little more than three hundred pages, is 

 not a thing to be undertaken with a light heart. One 

 of the principal difficulties to be overcome is to avoid 

 confusion in exposition and arrangement. In this 

 matter Dr. Windle might have had more success. In 



"^i^/^i^^' 



Fig -> —1 Mfi .,f Pit-dwelling, a, Natural soil; 3, Bank of same 



heaped up uiouiid Pit ; c. Central support of Roof; d. Roof of 'I'urfs 

 and Branches. From " Remains of the Prehistoric Age in England." 



more cases than one, instances of special types of 

 implements are quoted without giving the very 

 necessary information that they belong to widely 

 different periods. For instance, in dealing with 

 " P.'»'g'"iy flints," a puzzling subject. Dr. Windle quotes 

 a number of surface finds, and then goes on to say, 

 " in France they have been discovered at Bruniquel." 

 This can only mislead the inquirer or the student, for, 

 so far as we know, the Bruniquel station, which is 

 undoubtedly of the mammoth period, has no relation 

 at all to such surface finds as have been made in 

 Lincolnshire, Lancashire, India, or Belgium. Nothing 

 is more certain than that mere type or form alone is 

 the most unsafe criterion of age. 



This elementary axiom may sound very like a plati- 

 tude, but it is constantly neglected by men whose 

 words carry weight, and cannot, therefore, be too much 

 insisted upon. Such errors or vague statements affect 

 the essentials of prehistoric science, and if persisted in 

 inevitably retard the advance of knowledge instead of 

 accelerating it, as Dr. \'\'indle undoubtedly wishes to 

 do. Again, it is very questionable wisdom to devote 

 a chapter to " bone implements," the paragraphs deal- 

 ing indiscriminately with the remains from the French 

 caves, the Swiss lakes, and from a station like Grime's 

 Graves. In the first place, there is again no relation 

 between the sites quoted, and, so far as the French 

 caves are concerned, the " bone " implements are 

 mostly of horn. No doubt the information necessary 

 to a proper understanding of the relative ages of the 

 Dordogne caves, the Swiss lake dwellings, and the 

 Norfolk flint pits is to be found elsewhere in the book ; 

 but for a popular work dealing with a difficult and 

 complicatetl subject the first essential is clearness of 

 exposition bevond all possibility of misunderstanding. 



Further, Dr. Windle "s authorities are occasionally 

 antiquated. It is not treating the reader quite fairly 

 to give him Dr. Thurnam's classification of barrows 

 without qualification. Is it, for instance, quite certain 

 in the light of recent knowledge that all round 

 barrows are of the Bronze age? It is also a trifle hard 

 to find the late Dr. Frazer quoted as an authority on 



