On the Excavations at Rotherley, Woodcuts, and Bokerly Dyke. 295 



very probably have originally been forest, most of the low-lying 

 valleys having, in all probability, been forest in those days. The 

 White Sheet Hill is a high tract of down land running east and 

 west, and must always have been open and accessible to an invading 

 army coming from the east. If these detached works that I have 

 last mentioned ever formed part of a general system for the defence 

 of the country, in association with Bokerly, the line must have 

 extended for nine miles, from Martin Wood on the right to the 

 termination of the dyke at White Sheet Hill on the left, the gaps 

 between the several Hues having been occupied by forest. I base 

 this conjecture chiefly on the fact that the ditches of all of them are 

 on the east side, and that they were, consequently, thrown up with 

 a view to an attack from that quarter. If they were isolated and 

 independent entrenchments why should they all face the same 

 direction ? 



I have read with attention all the writings that were accessible 

 to me upon the obscure periods of history to which these entrench- 

 ments may have belonged. Some are by scholars of great ability, 

 who would not have failed to bring to light evidence relating to 

 them if it was to be found in the ancient chronicles and the works 

 of the ancient authors. But these writings serve chiefly to convince 

 the reader that nothing definite is to be expected from such sources. 

 It is not known where the Belgse landed, or where Vespasian 

 landed and fought, or where Cerdices Ora was, or where Mons 

 Badonicus was. I observe that two recent writers have proposed to 

 shuffle the whole of the ancient names of places and shift them from 

 their traditional localities. I have read with interest, but without 

 conviction, the imaginary campaign of Vespasian by one writer in 

 the West of England, and its final achievement in the hands of 

 another writer, in the great British Metropolis at the Pen Pits, 

 which turn out, on investigation, to be an ancient stone quarry ; 

 and whilst I am fully alive to the importance of studying all the 

 passages in ancient writings which have any bearing on the subject, 

 by competent scholars, I must confess that the evidence that can be 

 derived from them appears to be of the weakest possible description. 

 I am impressed rather with the value of an observation, made by 



