On the Excavations at Rotherley, Woodcuts, and Boherly Dyke. &91 



being on the right track for further discoveries if I live to accomplish 

 them. 



Bokerly Dyke, the present boundary-line between Dorset and 

 Wilts, is an entrenchment of high relief, nearly four miles in length, 

 running in a north-west and south-east direction across the old 

 Roman road, which runs from Sarum to Badbury. It has a ditch 

 on the north-east side of the rampart, proving that it was from this 

 point the enemy was expected. The fact of its being a defensive 

 work can, I think, hardly be doubted by anyone who will take the 

 trouble to examine it from end to end. It everywhere occupies 

 strong ground, if viewed from the standpoint of an enemy advancing 

 to attack it from the north-east. It runs somewhat crookedly along 

 the ground, and I am inclined to favour the idea, suggested I think 

 by Dr. Smart, that this crookedness arose from the constructors 

 availing themselves of hollows, as they occurred in the ground, to 

 dig their ditch, throwing up the earth upon higher ground, and 

 that by conforming to the inequalities of the surface in this way 

 they obtained the relief they desired with less expenditure of labour, 

 but the general direction was determined by considerations of defence 

 that can clearly be recognised. It ran across the Gwent, or open 

 downland, between two great forests, which existed at that time, 

 and the remains of which still, or until quite lately, did exist on 

 both flanks. On the south-east the dyke terminates upon strong 

 ground in Martin Wood, which may be considered to be the survival 

 of the Forest of Holt, and to have been formerly continuous with 

 the New Forest, On the left it terminated in a part of the country 

 which within the memory of persons still living was a part of 

 Cranborne Chase Wood. It may be said, perhaps, that forests 

 would hardly be sufficient to secure the flanks of an extended line 

 of entrenchment, and that it might easily be turned if it rested on 

 no more inaccessible protection than a wood. But there is reason 

 to believe that in this moist climate the primaeval forests may have 

 consisted of almost inaccessible networks of trees, and where this 

 was not the case it is more than probable that the lines of entrench- 

 ment may have been continued through them by abattis of felled 

 trees. Caesar speaks of the Britons employing felled trees in their 



