MORTIMER: BRITISH HABITATIONS OX DANBY NORTH MOOR. 415 
"As nothing but hoary antiquity will suit, imagine a body 
of ancient Britons with flint-tipped arrows and bronze daggers 
issuing from tlieir wigwams which clothed the sides of Roseberry 
Topping, and making for the vast forest which covers the hills 
to the" east and conceals amid its gloomy recesses the burial 
mounds of their more gifted chiefs. It is a hunting expedition. 
Their object is to capture the wild animals — deer or blue hares 
which inhabit the forest, and so provide food for their little 
ones and pit-holds. For this purpose they have skilfully con- 
structed a series of pitfalls extending across some rising ground 
from one slight v^alley to another, in the immediate neighbour- 
hood of three recently-erected howes, and moreover concealed the 
approach by earthen banks on either side, so that when the 
affrighted animals leap the bank they shall fall unconsciously 
into, &c. 
" If this fails to satisfy, I have nothing more to add." 
My doubts as to the origin of these pits being still as 
strong as those of Mr. Cole, I decided to make, at the first 
opportunity, a clandestine examination of them. Therefore, on 
July 19th, 1897, I, in company with an assistant, revisited these 
pits. This time I was supplied with a pointed steel rod, for 
the purpose of probing them, believing we should do no more 
harm to the heather-clad moor than would be done to a rick 
of hay by pricking it with the point of a needle. Though this 
proceeding was much less satisfactory than would have been the 
application of the pick and the shovel, we obtained results 
which, to a great extent, may be relied upon. 
We probed and measured five pits situated in difierent places 
in the group with considerable care, and their close uniformity in 
size is shown by four having a depth of 4 J feet and the fifth of 
4 feet. In each pit the probe (steel rod) reached the hard, undis- 
turbed rock at the bottom. To make allowance for the crumbling 
in of the edges of the pits, we took two opposite diameters of 
each pit, and in every instance by measuring from the edge 
of the pit where the probe reached the firm rock at a depth of 
18 inches. From these points the diameters of the pits ranged 
