By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



119 



there are several kinds : first, that which hath the most sharp and 

 piquant taste, another kind is the white chalkey marie, which is 

 most used in Britain : its effects are found to continue eighty 

 years, and no man was ever yet known to have manured the same 

 field with this marie twice in his lifetime." This will give us 

 some notion, that a people so far advanced in scientific agriculture, 

 was not altogether unskilled in profitably working the ground they 

 brought into cultivation : and though the Belgse settled themselves 

 at first on the coast, and never advanced very far north, we may 

 consider them as inhabitants of a portion of Wiltshire, for the 

 noble Wansdyke is generally allowed to be the work of this people, 

 who gradually advancing from the coast, and driving before them 

 the original settlers, secured the territory they had gained by a 

 ditch and bank of no ordinary dimensions ; and Wansdyke, so 

 conspicuous a feature in the centre of our Downs, remains a sample 

 of the fourth and last of these boundary defences, and a monu- 

 ment of the perseverence and laborious operations of those times. 1 

 Northward then of Wansdyke, the Belgse seem never to have 

 advanced, while southward they had gained possession of the 

 country to the sea-coast : and hence, (till Canon Jackson's well- 

 sustained argument dispersed all other theories, and has now happily, 

 as I think, settled the question for ever,) had been by some attri- 

 buted the origin of the name of the capital town of North Wilts, 

 " the Devizes," or the town at the division or near the border land 

 or boundary, the border land, that is of the Belgse and the Celt. 



But to return to the occupations of the Celts : we can hardly 

 suppose that those who dwelt so far iu-land knew much of com- 

 merce and trade. Exchange and barter of commodities within the 

 limits of each little state 3 was all the traffic they practised, con- 

 tenting themselves generally with what their own country produced : 

 though doubtless those who dwelt near the coast had some considerable 



1 Sir Richard Hoare's Ancient Wilts, vol. ii., pp. 16 — 21. See also a treatise 

 " On the Belgic ditches " in the Jonrnai of the Arckasological Institute, vol. viii., 

 pp. 143—157, by Dr. Guest. 



2 Wiltshire Collections, by Aubrey and Jackson, p. 306. 

 Wiltshire Magazine, vol. ix., p. 41. 



3 Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. ii., p. 195, chap. vi. 



