TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 159 



elevation. The Eildon Hills have similar artificial adaptations ; and tlie author 

 had himself traced the ditlerent soils of the tumulus in the greater Cumbrae, and 

 the hollows ■whence they were brought. He referred to the artificial summit of 

 the Dragon Hill, at Uffington Castle, Berks, and suggested that the White Horse 

 and the sculptured rocks at Ilkley were British delineations. After these e-\-idence3 

 of adaptation, he described the sei-pent, lizard, and alligator mounds of Messrs. 

 Squier and Lapham, which contain oval works towards the head, and evidences of 

 altars and fire within them. He then showed by diagi'ams several mounds that he 

 identified as corresponding with these, some even in minute details ; he referred to 

 examples in Arran, in Monteviot Park, in which latter, towards the south and east 

 of what he considered the site of an altar, he discovered human remains, and finally 

 dwelt on a serpentine mound in Argyleshire several hundi-ed feet long, and about 

 15 feet high by 30 broad, tapering gradually to the tail, the head being formed by 

 a circular cairn, the centre of which had evidently been occupied by a megalithic 

 structure, which he considered an altar, the large stones of which were lying 

 round the base of the cairn. He could not of course adduce direct evidences of the 

 worship of the serpent, but it had been traced as coexistent with sim-worship in 

 America, where these evidences of the serpent were found ; and discovering similar 

 rem.ains in Britain, which retains many indications of sim-worship, and as these 

 two forms of worship went almost hand in hand in other countries, he considered 

 himself justified in concluding that he had found examples of it here also, di-awing 

 attention to the variety and beauty of the specimens of early British art on the 

 table to show the care and extent of his explorations. 



On some indications of tJie Manners and Customs of tlie carhj Inliahitants of 

 Britain, deduced from the Remains of their toivns and villages. By John 

 S. PnExi, F.G.S., F.R.G.S., Member of the British Archaological Asso- 

 ciation. 



The author di-ew attention to two prominent points, viz. the universality of 

 the circle, curve, or oval in all the earliest British remains ; and the similarity of 

 the physics of the various localities where British towns are still ti-aceable. He 

 selected the -widely separated positions of Greaves Ash, in the Cheviot Hills, Stand- 

 lake, near Oxford, and Tolsford Hill, near Saltwood Castle, Kent ; and after showing 

 that the same features existed in each of these, although some of the settlements 

 were formed by excavations and some by erections ; after referring for examples 

 to the camps, forts, towns, and individual dwellings, — ornaments, as fibulffi, beads, 

 amulets, — articles of domestic use, as the quern, — and to the cup- and ring-marks 

 on the incised stones of Northumberland, New Grange, Ilkley, and elsewhere, he 

 argued that though divided into clans and tribes, yet that these were originally 

 but divisions of one people, as the idea could not be entertained that at the time 

 of these formations, with manj- of the tribes separating the people of such remote 

 districts, to say nothing of their frequent hostility, diflerent races should have 

 assimilated so much, more especially with inten-upted, or indeed no direct com- 

 munications. He did not, however, mean that this prejudiced the question of 

 cooccupation by a foreign and immigrating, or even preoccupying race, at that time 

 being distinct and unamalgamated with the mass of the people. Assuming these 

 evidences conclusive, he proceeded to compare the constructions with others at a 

 still wider range, selecting in Britain the extreme points of the Hebrides, Caernar- 

 vonshire, and Cornwall, and giving examples in the Alps, in Sicily, and even in the 

 wilderness near Mount Sinai, of similar designs ; illustrating his arguments by ori- 

 ginal drawings made by special pennission fi-om articles in the Ashmolean Museum 

 at Oxford, and from those of the Palestine Exploration Fund, &c. Eefemng to 

 the physical features of the localities he had described in Britain, he pointed out 

 the prevalence of the conical hiU towards the east of such settlements, with a 

 flowmg stream dividing the one from the other, as in the cases of the Breamish 

 flowing between Greaves Ash and the Ingram and Eeaveley Hills, the Thames 

 between Standlake and the Beacon Hill, and the stream between Tolsford Hill 

 and CjEsar's Camp. Where localities had not the desired featm-es, or they were 



