52 



The Naturalist. 



supply of water to the defenders. The entrenchment is of nearly 

 uniform height all along, being about eighteen feet above the level of 

 the ground, and having a ditch sixty feet wide at the outside. Of the 

 defensive character of the entrenchment there could not be the slightest 

 doubt, and it was a work of great strength, probably surmounted 

 originally by a palisade, and implying a large and well-disciplined 

 force for the construction and defence of it. After describing what he 

 considered as the most instructive portion of the whole district, the 

 oolite range to the north of the Derwent valley, which included a 

 system of defence persistently adopted in all prehistoric works in this 

 country, whether camps or dykes, he described how, with the kind 

 permission of ]\[essrs. Dormer, to whom the ground belongs, he com- 

 menced an excavation at the Danes' Dyke, on October 13th, 1879. A 

 quantity of flints and flint flakes were found, affording evidence that 

 the defenders of the earthwork used flint, and consequently that the 

 work itself was not later than the bronze period, and was, in fact of 

 the same age as the tumuli of the Yorkshire wolds. They were 

 narrowed to the opinion that the invaders of Flamborough, if invaders 

 they were, were the same people who landed on the south and south- 

 east coast of England, or else that these dykes belonged to the people 

 of the country, who, having imported the bronze culture from elsewhere, 

 were driven to the coast by another and more powerful race who 

 occupied the interior, and that these defences were associated with 

 their last occupation of the soil of Yorkshire. 



The Peesident, having expressed his appreciation of the paper, 

 called for any observations which might be made. 



The Eev. T. Taylor, with the aid of the diagram, showed that the 

 enemy against whom the dykes were made must have landed in the 

 Humber, and were marching up to attack the Roman station at 

 Mai ton. With the exception of the Victoria Cave, it was almost the 

 only remainder of the great cataclysm which took place when the 

 Roman civilization was withdrawn by our barbarous ancestors. 



Dr. Phene thought there could be no question that the second dyke 

 was to guard the approach from the west. 



General Pitt-Rivers, in reply, referred to the diagrams to point 

 out, by the very arrangements of the dyke, that they could only have 

 been intended for the defence of the inland country. 



AXCIEXT D^VELLINGS ON THE YOEKSHIKE WOLDS. 

 Mr. J . R. Mortimer contributed an account of the discovery of six 

 ancient dwellings found under and near the British barrows on the 



