On Deneholes. 
55 
No. 8, though their length is about the same. To give more 
space in No. 2 the excavators would naturally convert it into 
a likeness of No. 3, by adding a sixth chamber, and by 
increasing the breadth of all the chambers. But this 
increase of breadth would make the partitions between the 
chambers very thin, till at last a hole would appear in one of 
them, such as we saw in No. 3. Enlargement of this hole 
would give more space, and eventually produce a pillar on 
one side of the shaft. Soon a corresponding pillar would be 
similarly formed on the other side of the shaft. And by 
adding to the width of each chamber, without widening its 
mouth, the cavern would come, in time, to be supported by 
six pillars, each pillar standing in the space between what 
were once the mouths of the separate chambers. It would 
then assume the shape of No. 2 Pit. Stankey, as it was 
before the removal of the two pillars on one side of the 
shaft, which has caused so great a downfall from the roof. 
In No. 4 Stankey, we see a pillar formed on one side 
of the shaft, and another in process of formation on the 
other side. 
In the case of pits the shafts of which are open, it must 
always be somewhat uncertain how much they have been 
modified since they ceased to be used for the purposes for 
which they were originally intended. I am inclined to think, 
myself, that either symmetry or a want of symmetry, which 
appears merely to mark a stage of the slow evolution I have 
endeavoured to trace, points towards the conclusion that pits 
in which they only appear have been altered, in no material 
degree, since they were used by the race that originally 
constructed them. Thus in Pit No. 2, Hangman’s Wood, 
the only part that I should take to be of decidedly later date 
thau the rest is the hole at one end of one of the two longest 
chambers, which is utterly out of harmony with what appears 
to be the original mode of development, and is in all 
likelihood the work of men to whom it was unfamiliar. 
Careful examination of the heap at the bottom even of an 
open shaft will, I trust, give some information as to its 
original date, while to drive a gallery from an open pit to ah 
