184, Barhury Castle. 



layer between a green core and the blue surface layer of the glass; 

 by removal of the blue layer three white spots are left at equidistant 

 places on the bead. The occurrence of characteristic Saurian ware 

 and other forms of Roman pottery was confined to the rectangular 

 circumvention, the Roman character of which cannot be doubted. 

 The best of these specimens are now, by the kindness of Mrs. 

 Kemble, placed in the County Museum at Devizes. 



The part which the mounded hill-forts were constructed to play 

 may be gathered from the history of one of them. Old Sarum was 

 the Sorbiodunum of the Romans/ a name evidently latinized from a 

 Celtic one for a dun or fortress— Searo-dwn^erha^a ; as Searo-burh was 

 its form when Saxons first expressed it in their tongue. Originally 

 a bold mound of chalk, it stands in a commanding position, and 

 must have been almost by nature a fortress. The long-head race of 

 earliest inhabitants of England— the men of the rude stone imple- 

 ments—may have learned the need of earth defences. They certainly 

 understood earthworks and the building of barrows, but their works 

 would needs be rude. It seems not impossible, however, that their 

 defences in that early stage of fortification were for protection as much 

 against the larger animals as men, and may have been formed with 

 the foss inside and the bank or vallum towards the foe. Ringsbury, 

 Avebury, and Wansdyke, it may be, and some other dykes of this 

 description, would, in such case, have been the work of this age of 

 " the old men." After them came other races. A second race, short 

 of skull and taller of stature, were more refined. Their implements 

 are worked by art, and they were acquainted with the use of bronze. 

 But the chronologists and archaeologists have much yet to do to clear 

 up the obscurity that enshrouds the history and origin of the different 

 hordes of men that passed over the land before the advent of the 

 Romans. The earlier race, or races, appear to have been akin to 

 the Basques— a later one that spread through the northern centre of 

 England, seems to have had Finnish characteristics. Successive 

 waves of Gael and Gaul swept over the south and west, probably 

 enslaving the survivors of the long-head inhabitants, and to the 

 Gaulish race the Belgse belonged who, shortly before the advent of 

 the Romans, began a career of conquest over the country in whic h 



