Wilts Obituary. 



most learned archaeologist. The General started on an excavation with 

 no theory to support, and no desire merely to find museum specimens. 

 He simply recorded everything — no matter how uninteresting it might be 

 — that he found or observed, and then at the end tabulated the results. 

 When he was engaged on Wansdyke someone asked his opinion as to its 

 age. He said he had none — he was digging in order to be able to form 

 one. In the same spirit he urged the importance of illustrating as far as 

 possible not only the few remarkable objects found during any excavation, 

 but also the great mass of the odds and ends — the bits of pottery, the 

 fragments of bronze or iron, the nails, &c, &c. — and he set the example 

 himself by giving the most careful drawings of every bit of ornamental 

 pottery, every fragment of metal, however "rubbishy," which his ex- 

 cavations produced, with the result that the evidences of his work are 

 there for the archaeologist of the future to build on, as surely as though 

 he had been present when Wor Barrow was removed bodily down to the 

 original chalk, or the whole surface of the South Lodge Camp with its ditch 

 and its rampart was laid bare. For whatever the General did, he did 

 thoroughly. His labourers at Eushmore had been trained to the work, 

 and they were overlooked by assistants, skilled draughtsmen and 

 surveyors, who also had been specially trained by the General, and no 

 excavation was ever allowed to proceed unless either he himself or one 

 of his skilled assistants was present the whole of the time — to mark 

 down the exact position of every object found, on the large scale plans 

 and sections prepared beforehand for that purpose. Then, when the 

 field work was finished, the pottery was carefully classified according to 

 its age ; the animal bones, all of which perfect enough to be measured, 

 were carefully preserved, were compared with type specimens of the 

 existing red deer, the pig, the Kerry cow, or the St. Kilda sheep — of 

 which living examples were kept at Eushmore, as well as skeletons, 

 expressly for the purposes of comparison ; the Kerry cow and the St. 

 Kilda sheep being selected as being the nearest to the sheep and cow of 

 Eomano-British days of any modern breed. In the same way the human 

 skulls and bones were most carefully and exactly measured and compared. 

 Everything was drawn or photographed for future publication ; and, 

 lastly, an exact model to scale, showing the ground as it was before the 

 excavations were begun, and the full results of the excavations themselves, 

 with all the more important finds shown in situ, was made in plaster 

 and deposited with the finds themselves in the museum at Farnham — so 

 that the archaeologist who visits Farnham can still see the Eomano- 

 British villages of Eotherley and Woodcuts, and the sections through 

 Bokerley Dyke and Wansdyke — in miniature — precisely as they appeared 

 when the excavations were complete. This most valuable method of 

 preserving the evidence of excavation has since been followed in some 

 instances — such as the excavations at Silchester — by other excavators, 

 but it was the General who set the example, and who — as the very ex- 

 tensive series of models at Farnham show— used the method more 

 largely than anyone else has done. For all this work it is obvious that 

 not only time and knowledge, but also money to no small amount, was 



