By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 271 



brought to light many portions of this stone, shaped into querns, 

 but left on the spot as if they had been found to be of inferior 

 quality and unsuitable to the purpose required. Many persons, 

 therefore, have accepted as an explanation of the pits that they 

 were simply excavations for getting grindstone. But a great and 

 almost insurmountable objection to this is that no people in their 

 senses would ever have worked a bed of stone in such a way. To 

 die: hundreds — it is said there have been thousands — of fresh holes 

 one after another, instead of working on continuously, as all stone 

 quarries are worked, would be a mode of operation unheard of. It 

 seems impossible to accept this explanation. 



Then, were the pits human habitations ? We read of people in 

 underground dwellings not only in old times but even now. The 

 Greek poet iEschylus, in the play called " Prometheus," puts into 

 the mouth of his hero these words : — " Before my time men knew 

 nothing about houses built of brick, or carpenters' work ; but they 

 dwelt in excavations in the earth, like tiny emmets in the sunless 

 depths of caverns." In Kamschatka and the Arctic regions these 

 huts are dug underground for warmth. I read the other day of a 

 specimen in California of a round hole dug in the ground ; poles and 

 slices of bark formed a conical roof supported by other upright poles; 

 and there are in England, indeed in Wilts, on the downs, groups of 

 such holes, supposed to have served the same purpose. But the 

 question is, were these Pen pits made and used for permanent occu- 

 pation, so as to form (as from their great number they must have- 

 done) a very large and populous British settlement? From the 

 present appearance of the place this sounds at first incredible. But 

 that it really was the case is the opinion of Mr. Thomas Kerslake^ 

 of Bristol, who has maintained it by very able and ingenious 

 arguments, set forth in pamphlets which he has published upon the 

 subject. 



The matter was taken up by the Archaeological Society of Somer- 

 setshire : an examination of the ground was made by a committee, 

 but funds being wanting to carry it on to any great extent the 

 result was not decisive. Another examination on a larger scale was 

 then made under the direction of General Pitt Rivers, whose duties 



