228 



Peacock : The Soil StoveJiouse. 



ag-e. Pottery of the late Mctorian era lying- at the same level 

 with ashes and other refuse, shows a kitchen midden origin. 

 Other lines, quite as distinct, may show the lime, burnt clay, and 

 bone fragments, once so deservedly popular with our agricul- 

 tural forelders. There can be no mistaking such dressings 

 when they have once been observed, and if the date when any 

 substance was applied can be obtained for certain, the burial 

 rate of that particular soil is known. 



If a neighbourhood has long been ' an inhabited spot,' at the 

 boundary line between the black earth and subsoil or rock bed, 

 the accumulated records of other ages lie side by side, and not 

 unfrequently resting one on another. In one trench, and on the 

 same line, but not exactly at the same depth, for that depends 

 on the surface contour, may be found prehistoric stone imple- 

 ments, with the tusks of the wild boar, horses' teeth, and those 

 of lesser animals, along with coins of the earliest period to those 

 of George the Third. A British bronze buckle is not wide apart 

 from a wrist-guard of some ancient bowman, and a spindle 

 whorl of some diligent house-mother ; a large bullet of much 

 more recent date, and an iron hay-fork, with a tang for driving 

 into the shaft, not a socket into which the shaft fits, as forks are 

 made nowadays. 



The long-neglected quernstone may be found overlying frag- 

 mentar}^ pottery of a period too remote to fix a certain date, with 

 later pieces of domestic earthenware above them, which as 

 plainly declare their age and origin as any china of to-day. 

 Gold, silver, and bronze coins are rare or common according to 

 the value of the metal. Old iron implements in a fair state of 

 preservation are rare ; much seems to depend on the soil they 

 are buried in. When found iron tools are often only too much 

 like the bones of men and the lesser animals, in too advanced 

 a state of decay to reveal their secrets or use. The teeth can 

 outlast for long the jaw that grew them, as the iron does the 

 w^ood shaft. Were the climate d.^ier, or had the bones been 

 buried at a greater depth, and away from the action of humic 

 earth, they would have lasted ages longer. Damp can largely 

 account for the few bones we possess of prehistoric man. 



The nearer a soil investigation approaches the house-place 

 of the present or of a bygone age, the more frequent relics of 

 scientific value become. Our forebearers over 2,000 years 

 ago were as keen and far-seeing as people of to-day, if not 

 scientifically so well fitted for the battle of existence. They fixed 

 their home-places on or near the richest soils a neighbourhood 



Naturalist, 



