£90 Inaugural Address hy the President of the Society, 



erected, the hill* forts within the area defended by them were no 

 longer of any use. They might have been occupied afterwards, as 

 we know they were occupied in Boman times, but they were no 

 longer erected, except on a small scale on the lines of march of the 

 Boman armies, or as places of support for the continuous lines of 

 entrenchment. The inhabitants of the district, secured in the 

 peaceable occupation of their villages by these frontier defences, had 

 no longer any occasion to fortify their homes. Now the villages 

 that I have described, although some of them might have been 

 surrounded by slight banks and stockades, as a precaution against 

 wolves, or against casual marauders, were to all intents and purposes 

 open villages. They were the habitations of people who felt secure 

 in their positions, and I think that, for the reasons I have given, it 

 is reasonable, on a priori grounds, to expect that such villages would 

 be found to be associated in point of time with the continuous en- 

 trenchments. Dr. Guest, in his well-known paper on what he terms 

 "the Belgic Ditches/' appears to me to be perfectly right in 

 assuming that these continuous entrenchments must necessarily 

 have been the work of a people in a higher condition of civilization, 

 to secure their territory against the depredations of an inferior 

 people, in a lower condition of life. But, whether he is right in 

 adopting Stukeley's opinion that these superior people were Belgse 

 is a question which I am not prepared either to accept or to deny, 

 without better evidence. It is open to doubt whether the Belgse 

 invaded the country in a body, or in driblets, and whether they were 

 so far in advance of the aborigines as to have adopted a totally 

 different method of warfare. From what little we do know about 

 them they appear to have been rather in the hill -fort stage of 

 organisation, like the Atrebates, Dobuni, Durotridges, and other 

 tribes, by which they were surrounded. 



These were my views at the time that I approached the question 

 of the origin of Bokerly Dyke, though I did not care to publish 

 my opinions, because I think it is always undesirable to give ex- 

 pression to theories which one may afterwards feel one's self committed 

 to as the investigation goes on. I am now in a position to speak 

 of these views as proved up to a certain point, and I am assured of 



