110 Vestiges of the Earliest Inhabitants of Wiltshire. 



Las been reclaimed, the woods cut down, 1 and the marshes and ; 

 lakes drained, the air has become more serene, and the climate! 

 more dry and healthy. 2 



Such was the natural aspect of the country, and such the climate j 

 during nearly or quite the whole period of its occupancy by the j 

 Celts, and it is not difficult to conjecture what districts they would 

 select for their settlements. I believe we may assert as a general 

 maxim, that in almost every case, the first colonists of a country 

 sought for the eminences and not the bottoms, with a view to 

 security: 3 but in the case of Britain, the vallies being such as I 

 have described, the high grounds and more especially the downs 

 offered almost the only eligible sites for habitation. Sometimes 

 indeed the Britons seem to have preferred the skirts of the forests, 

 or the banks of the streams, in closer proximity to the game 

 which they so assiduously hunted : but for the most part they 

 preferred the open downs, 4 where they could pasture their 

 cattle, enjoy a clearer and drier atmosphere, and guard against 

 surprise from the marauding attacks so common amongst no- 

 madic barbarians. And that they did so inhabit the downs, 

 even if we had no other evidence, the numererous earth-works, 

 barrows, dykes, enclosures, trackways, and even vestiges of 

 hut circles, (as I shall presently more fully show) are a sufficient 

 and sure proof. 



But when so small a part of the country was available for habi- 

 tation or pasturage, it is manifest that the Celtic inhabitants of 



1 Humboldt mentions three ways in which trees cool the air, viz., by cooling 

 shade, by evaporation, and by radiation: "forests," he says, "protect the 

 ground from the direct rays of the sun, evaporate fluids elaborated by the trees 

 themselves, and cool the strata of air in immediate contact with them by the 

 radiation of heat from their appendicular organs or leaves." [Aspects of Nature, 

 vol. i,, p. 127, E.T. Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, vol. i., p, 267. 



2 Sharon Turner's History of England, vol. i., p. 43. 



3 Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Age, vol. iii., p. 519, "all the Early 

 Greek towns were built upon an eminence." Eawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii., 

 p. 318. 



4 Sir R. Hoare's Ancient Wilts, vol. i., 34, 84. &c, ii., 45, 106, &c. Carte, 

 in his History of England, p. 76, says "The gentlemen lived in the high grounds, 

 where they first fixed their mansions, and the common people in the lower situ- 

 ations, which gave food to their cattle." 



