NEOLITHIC LIFE IN DEVON AND CORNWALL. 55 



spinning, cooking in the holes hy the hearths, and preparing the 

 skins of the animals killed in the chase by the men, and making 

 garments from them ; while around them the children, who 

 probably wore no clothes at all in hot weather, played at rude 

 games, or imitated the more serious pursuits of their parents. 

 We can picture to ourselves the men hunting, fishing, tending 

 their cattle, and perhaps engaging in some rudimentary agricul- 

 tural employment, or manufacturing flint tools and weapons 

 from the lumps of flint which in Cornwall were obtained from 

 the north-east, either by parties organized from their own villages, 

 or from caravans of traders from beyond the Tamar. We may 

 even suppose a priesthood supervising the erection of the sacred 

 circles, and carrying on some sort of ceremonies therein, or 

 taking part in funereal rites, and in the construction of barrows 

 with long lines of stones stretching away across the country from 

 them ; and we may conclude our brief and imperfect survey 

 of this ancient people and their remains with the reflection that 

 the mere erection of regular circles and long lines of stones, 

 although the stones were much smaller than those of Abury, 

 Stonehenge, or Stanton Drew, demanded an amount of con- 

 structive skill, of careful planning, and of organized effort, 

 actuated by some common underlying purpose or idea, which we 

 cannot properly attribute to savages of so low a type as those by 

 whom some other parts of the world are even yet populated ; and 

 that, poor as the manner of life of these early inhabitants 

 of Devon and Cornwall may have been, they had yet advanced 

 some distance beyond the first steps of civilization. 



