Journal of Proceedings. 
xxxix 
Hangman’s Wood were precisely those through which the Bexley holes 
were sunk, and they had noticed in the first case that day, that, in con¬ 
sequence of not having a sufficient thickness of chalk in the roof, a great 
fall had taken place. In the second hole, where there was a thickness of 
6 feet or more of chalk in the roof, no fall had taken place worth speaking 
of, except in one corner. This proved the necessity for sinking the 
chambers well into the chalk, a fact probably known to the men who 
made them. If asked the purpose of the deep Dene-holes, like those 
visited that day, he would say, as at present informed, that they were 
intended as places of occasional refuge in times of danger, and as store¬ 
houses. 
Mr. Walker said that as he was coming down there he happened to 
light on a neighbour of his who knew India and China exceedingly well. 
He had told this gentleman the purpose of the excursion, and he said, 
“ I have been very much interested in seeing similar excavations in the 
northern part of Asia and the Himalaya mountains. There the natives 
choose similar places as store-houses for grain, and call them pootcilis .” 
He had also seen the same thing in Delhi and in China, and the same 
screen was always chosen—a wood. These places, which were obviously 
old places of storage and retreat, belonged to a very unsettled state of 
our country,—perhaps before the Saxon settlement, perhaps before the 
Roman settlement,—evidently to a time when it was quite unsafe to 
garner the produce of a field in the open field in the shape of ricks 
accessible to incendiaries or to prowling bands. Supposing they belonged 
to a certain early aboriginal state of society, he thought the fact his 
friend Mr. Holmes had mentioned—that the deep Dene-holes were 
almost invariably in a limestone formation—showed that people in 
different parts of the world, and in the same stage of civilisation, adopted 
the same means to preserve their goods. These were evidently pre¬ 
historic, and belonged to an incipient stage of society. We had now a 
means of establishing the date of archasological structures which we did 
not possess before the discovery of stone implements, and a new interest 
had been given to such remains ; and though they had not had time that 
day to make proper excavations, still he believed that they were Neolithic, 
Neolithic implements having been found abundantly in the vicinity. 
Mr. Worthington Gf. Smith said he felt bound to somewhat differ from 
the two last speakers, for his impression was that the holes were excavated 
chiefly as quarries for the flint with which to make stone implements, it 
being a well-known fact that newly quarried flint is more tractable for manu¬ 
facture than flint that has been exposed on the surface. He referred to 
other pits, as those in Kent, at Brandon in Suffolk, Cissbury near 
Worthing, Spiennes in Belgium, and other places, and said that the 
excavations commonly ceased when a good floor of flint was reached, and 
when one floor was exhausted another was dug for; that the excavated 
flints had been found at the bottom ready to bring up, and implements in 
every stage of manufacture at the top of the pits. He would not deny 
