59 



dmik tcr i|e JSwtisjj »nfo Jonran Jttttqmtws of 

 % gefr. |. & sum, »•!• 



Second Edition. Published by the Wiltshire Archaeological 

 Society, 1885. 



Reviewed by Rev. R. C. Clutterbuce, Rector of Knight's Enhani, Andover. 



|g^jHE Wiltshire Archaeological Society is to be congratulated 

 SStf on ^eing ^ ne channel through which the result of Mr 

 Smith's thirty years of learned research and patient investigation 

 have been given to the reading public : the first edition, published 

 by the Marlborough College Natural History Society, having been 

 in great part consumed by fire, so that not even all the original 

 subscribers could obtain a copy. The volume before us only professes 

 to deal with the antiquities of the British and Roman periods in 

 forty-two parishes comprehended in a hundred square miles of the 

 North Wiltshire Downs : but within the limits the author has thus 

 set himself he has completely exhausted his subject. The book is 

 touchingly dedicated " To my wife, the constant companion for the 

 last thirty years, of my rambles on horseback over the Wiltshire 

 Downs " — and its plan, as well as the object of the investigations 

 described in it, will be best given in Mr. Smith's own words : — 



"In 1852, seeing the downs around me becoming broken up, and many of the 

 barrows fast disappearing under the plough, I began to map down such districts 

 as were newly brought under cultivation, and so keep a record of such of the 

 mutilated earthworks as were still recognisable. Then, as my material increased } 

 I projected a map on a large scale of the district surrounding Abury ; and taking 

 the one-inch ordnance map as my guide, I enlarged it to six inches linear measure 

 or thirty- six square inches, to the mile, every such square mile being distinctly 

 measured off, lettered and numbered, and on this I began to mark, as accurately 

 as I could, all the barrows, camps, dykes, roads, cromlechs, stone circles, cattle 



