Miscellaneous Notes on Deneholes. 
105 
mouths, to the depth sometimes of one hundred feet, where 
they branch out like the veins of mines; and this kind is 
chiefly used in Britain.” 
I feel that when I state that Mr. Roach Smith’s whole case 
rests on the passage from Pliny just quoted, some incredulity 
may be felt. Yet so it is ! I venture, on the other hand, to 
assert that no amount of documentary evidence could possibly 
render unnecessary the most thorough exploration of the pits 
themselves. But what is the worth even of the documentary 
evidence that forms Mr. Smith’s sole reliance ? We have 
merely the second or third hand information obtained by a 
notoriously uncritical collector of scraps of knowledge, who 
had himself never visited Britain. And it is almost certain 
from Pliny’s language—as rendered into English by Mr. 
Roach Smith—that Pliny’s informant had never descended a 
Denehole. For had he done so he could hardly have spoken 
of the chambers below as “ branching out like the veins of 
mines.” The regular form and the separation of each Dene¬ 
hole from its neighbour must surely have struck the most 
careless observer. While though the old flint workings at 
Grimes Graves and Cissbury might be described as “branching 
out like the veins of mines,” yet their shafts are broad, and 
could never have been described by anyone who saw them as 
“ like wells, with narrow mouths.” 
Thus, if the quotation from Pliny formed the only avail¬ 
able evidence of any kind, it would by no means settle the 
question as to the original purpose of our Hangman’s Wood 
pits, being, as it is, about equally applicable to them and to 
those at Grimes Graves. But there is other documentary 
evidence bearing upon this question. Diodorus Siculus states 
that the inhabitants of Britain preserved their harvest by 
cutting off the ears of corn and storing them in pits under 
ground. For the prevalence of underground storehouses and 
habitations in all parts of the world, and in both ancient 
and modern times, I need only refer to Mr. Spurrell’s well- 
known paper in Nos. 152 and 158 of the ‘Archaeological 
Journal.’ One point, however, seems well worth noting here 
in connection with documentary evidence bearing on our 
subject. It is this :—While an ancient writer is hardly likely 
to testify to the existence of a (to him) peculiar custom, like 
that of storing corn in underground granaries, without sufficient 
warrant, his statement that certain peculiar pits in chalk were 
for chalk may have no value whatever. For all pits in chalk, 
whatever the purpose of their excavators, involve the removal 
of the chalk and its utilisation in some way. And the proba¬ 
bility is that Pliny’s informant, for example, saw or heard of 
