26 
The Presidential Address. 
mean additional clearing of forest, and each new immigra¬ 
tion may be presumed to have added to the density of the 
population, though it is believed not to have reached a 
a million by the time of Caesar. 43 
It is with the fourth race, the Celts, that the written 
records of British History begin. Pytheas, 44 the astronomer 
of Marseilles, noted, in the middle of the fourth century before 
Christ, that they had abundance of wheat in Kent, which 
they thrashed in covered barns ; that they drank metheglin, 
made of wheat and honey, and that they also grew millet, 
had cultivated fruits, and some domestic animals. Timeas, 45 
a contemporary writer, mentions their canoes made of wicker¬ 
work covered with hide ; whilst Posidonius, the Stoic, writing 
in the first century a.d., says “ the people have mean habita¬ 
tions constructed for the most part of rushes or sticks, and 
their harvest consists in cutting off the ears of com and 
storing them in pits underground.” These “mean habita- 
tations ” seem to have been the bee-hive huts, whether sub¬ 
terranean, as at Salisbury, 46 or with a hollowed floor and 
wigwam-roof, as apparently on the Cotteswold Hills. They 
seem also to have erected stockades, “duns” or towns, 47 in 
times of war, and to have made no contemptible advances in 
agriculture and manufactures before the Roman invasion. 
They manured and marled their land, chalk being dug not 
only for home use, but for exportation to the Continent. 48 
Caesar gives somewhat contradictory accounts as to their 
corn, but certainly at a but slightly later period considerable 
43 Pearson, ‘ Historical Maps,’ p. viii. 
44 For a full account of Pytheas, see the early part of Mr. Elton’s work. 
His account of Britain is given on p. 32. The remains of his works 
have been collected in ‘ Pytheae Massiliensis Fragmenta ’ by A. Arvedson, 
Upsala, 1824. 
45 See Elton, p. 35. 
46 See Stevens, ‘ Flint-Chips.’ 
47 “ Oppidum autem Britanni vocant, cum silvas impeditas vallo atque 
fossa munierunt, quo incursionis hostium vitandae causa convenire con- 
suerunt.” — Cksar, ‘De Bello Gallico,’ v., 21. Such a town was the 
“dun,” the Welsh “ dinas,” a castle or a city. 
48 For a detailed account of this agricultural process and trade see 
Pliny, ‘ Historia Naturalis,’ xvii., 4. 
