TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 833 



Government should continue to appropriate a small sum (it is now under 200/. a 

 year) to apply to such purposes as may be thought desirable, such as building sheds 

 to preserve the monuments, but that they should not necessarily be held respon- 

 sible for all the monuments placed under the Act, and that the Bill being a permis- 

 sive one, it should rest with the public to make use of it or not, as they may think 

 proper. If there is no demand for the preservation of monuments, there is no 

 reason why the country should be saddled with the expense of it. If there is a 

 demand, let those who are interested use the law on the subject as they use any 

 other to prosecute delinquents. I think also, the provision that the new monuments 

 before being included should rest forty days before Parliament, might be advan- 

 tageously abolished. The First Commissioner, with the practical knowledge of the 

 Inspector, is fully competent to decide upon tbe monuments to be included. It is 

 evident that if it were desired to save any monument that might be threatened, 

 the forty days would afford ample time to enable the destruction to be carried out 

 before the Act could be applied. With these alterations I think the Act would 

 take root in the country and produce better results. Of one thing, however, 1 

 feel certain, that as long as the owner of a monument takes an interest in it he is 

 the best person that the public can look to for the preservation of it. 



In conclusion it may perhaps interest the meeting if I say a few words upon the 

 results of my recent excavations on the borders of Dorset and Wilts, upon which I 

 have been at work for the last eight years, the detailed account of which is recorded 

 in the two quarto volumes extending to 541 pages and 159 plates, the last of which 

 is just completed. 



I have excavated numerous barrows of the bronze age near Rushmore, about 

 half-way between Salisbury and Blandford. Winkelbury Camp has been examined 

 and sections cut through the ramparts ; an Anglo-Saxon cemetery near it has been 

 dug out, and two Romano-British villages thoroughly explored, the positions of 

 which are shown on the map now exhibited on the walls, a reduced facsimile of 

 which is given on page 835. 



In recording these excavations I have acted on the principle that views upon 

 anthropological subjects are constantly on the change, as our imperfect knowledge 

 of the early inhabitants of the country increases, and that when the records of excava- 

 tions are confined to opinions and results, it is probable that those facts only which 

 coincide with the theories current at the time, receive the prominence they deserve. 



The requirements of the future demand that everything should be recorded and 

 tabulated in such a way as to be of easy access hereafter. I have therefore esta- 

 blished a system of relic tables in which, without confusing the text and making it 

 unreadable, every object, however small and apparently trivial, is inserted, and the 

 great majority of them are figured in the plates. 



It would occupy too much time to enter into details on the present occasion. 

 The result has been to show by a computation from the bones of twenty-eight 

 individuals, found buried in pits in the villages, that the Romanised Britons of this 

 district were an exceedingly small race, having an average stature of not more than 

 5 feet 2-6 inches for the males, and 4 feet 10-9 inches for the females ; that the 

 tallest man was only 5 feet 7'8 inches, and he was an inch and a half taller than 

 the next taUest man. 



In head form, the great majority of twenty-six skeletons measured were 

 mesaticephalic and mostly coffin-shaped, but three were hyper-dolichocephalic 

 and two brachycephalic, which shows that the head form approached that of the 

 neolithic, long barrow people, with a probable admixture of either Roman or 

 bronze age types. 



The stature is slightly less than that given by Thurnam for the long barrow 

 people of this district, but Dr. Garson informs me that, in a paper which he will 

 read at this meeting, he will show that the height of the Romano-Britons whom I 

 have discovered tallies as nearly as possible with that of some long barrow bones 

 found near Devizes. All are of course shorter than the skeletons of the bronze 

 age, two of which I have found in the same locality, and which are of the usual 

 tall stature and round-headed types of that people. 



1888. 3 H 



