70 



NA TURE 



[March i8, 1909 



sideration of the wants of the astronomical inquirer, 

 who cannot but treat uncertified plans, so to speak, 

 as so much waste of labour. Unfortunately, one 

 encounters the same difficulty in most works on 

 archaeology, so much so that one wonders why any 

 compass lines are drawn on the plans at all. Undated 

 magnetic bearings are useless, and unexplained 

 bearings are, if anything, still more useless. 



Our author, however, employs the whole force of 

 his ridicule in belabouring the very class of fellow- 

 workers in the same field he has so wilfully left 

 unprovided for. An observer ventured to say that a 

 curiously symmetrical work on Firle Hill, Susse.x, 

 was a " Stonehenge in earth " — Fig. i8i in the book 

 under notice. It was evidently a mistake to take 

 the corners of the central square as of solstitial sig- 

 nificance, that is if the bearings of the plan are 

 true. The author, however, seems not to have 

 noticed even that. The observer's main contention 



are merely the sites of bygone windmills! " (i6.). But 

 elsewhere he notes that " round barrows of large size 

 have been turned to various utilitarian purposes. 

 They were favourite sites for windmills, for example^ 

 like the Derry Mount at Nottingham Castle." 



A long barrow in Dunstable is called Windmill 

 Hill (p. 531). That the sites about Lewes are such 

 utilised barrows seems to be highly probable ; yet the 

 author winds up his remarks upon a subject he 

 betrays no fitness to discuss with the following 

 peroration : — " The millers of the downs are all but 

 gone, and the last of their mills must soon cease to 

 struggle against the competition of steam roller-mills 

 and the modern taste for tasteless bread ; but should 

 there come to their dusty shades any intelligence 

 of the matters which vex the minds of men on earth, 

 they must laugh jollily to think of their old haunts 

 translated into temples of the ' dim red dawn of 

 man,' of themselves apotheosised into sapient 



Mendip Ringworks, Priddy. From " Earthwork of England." 



is fully borne out in the plan that a line across the 

 centre of the three works on the spot indicates a 

 May-day orientation. A similar work on Mount 

 Caburn gives a line at right angles to sunrise en 

 May-day (Fig. 180), as well as an equinoctial line. 

 Again, a similar work on Lewes Down (Fig. 182) 

 gives a line at right angles to sunrise at the winter 

 solstice. But instead of submitting such observations 

 to some scientific test, our author indulges in such 

 remarks as the following: — " Whence it is suggested 

 that the whole is a work (Firle Hill) dating from that 

 ' vastly remote epoch ' when the year was accounted 

 to begin in May- — an epoch when the South Downs 

 were inhabited by an immigrant race who brought 

 with them astronomical ideas once prevalent in 

 Egypt and Chaldea " (p. 537). " A little further 

 investigation would have revealed to both authorities 

 (Pitt-Rivers and the astronomical observer) that 

 there are quite a number of such cryptic works upon 

 the downs about Lewes, and that, in sober fact, they 

 NO. 2055, VOL. 80] 



astronomers, and of the later-day Quixotes so over- 

 read in Druidical lore that they must needs ride 

 a-tilting against windmills ! And where shall the 

 student of earthworks find a more homely lesson in 

 all that an antiquary should be? — cautious, and again 

 cautions, and yet a third time cautious " (p. 539). 

 Where, indeed, shall the student find a more homely 

 lesson on incaution than in the author's remarks on 

 oriented windmill sites? One whom the author may 

 have numbered in his list of " later-day Quixotes so 

 over-read in Druidical lore " (for the author has read 

 the present writer's incursions into that land of 

 mystery) may fairly return the compliment and 

 ask. Who is the real Quixote in the case? 



The author can hardly refer to anything so-called 

 " Druidical " in a truly scientific spirit. Dealing 

 formally nowhere with the subject of Druidism, he 

 always refers to it in a prohibitive fashion. It is 

 " an obsession with the multitude " (p. 586). It is 

 something that ridicule has killed (p. 691). Nothing 



