has a clerestory, and side aisles which are continued to the west wall of the tower, and the tower opens to the nave by an extremely fine and lofty arch of Early English character, the architrave mouldings being very deep, with the toothed ornament in the outer moulding; the shafts have very elegant capitals with the oak leaf; the arches opening to the aisles, north and south are of the same date but lower and plainer. Within the tower are begun the springing of ribs for a groined ceiling never completed. The nave has on each side four very lofty arches of singular character, the heads being ogee with finial, and in the space under each finial is a shield charged with arms or with the letters I HV. The mouldings of the arches are very fine, and the piers are each formed of four clustered octagonal shafts with very rich foliated capitals. The clerestory windows are set in pairs over each arch and are rectilinear, the arches, however, appear curvilinear. The windows of the aisles are rectilinear, those on the south of four lights, and very good, some having rich ancient stained glass; on the north they are of three lights. Above the chancel arch is a rectilinear window of four lights which throws in a great deal of light and produces a beautiful effect. The chancel arch is wide, with good mouldings, and the shafts have foliated capitals. The pewing of the nave is old and shabby, but some portions of old wood carving remain. The chancel has an aisle on the south, and a chapel on the north side. The chancel is of much lower elevation than the nave, and is divided from the south aisle by three pointed arches with octagonal pillars, the eastern arch is partly filled with a wall, and contains a door opening to a small enclosed chapel at the east end of the south aisle, in this is a plain niche with piscina, and an alabaster altar tomb of very gorgeous work, and mixed Italian character. The chancel opens to the north chapel by a single pointed arch springing from brackets of curvilinear character; in this chapel are two fine curvilinear windows of three lights, with very rich tracery. On the north side of the altar table is an altar tomb of rectilinear date, panelled with quatrefoils, and having a band filled with square flowers. There is a brass inscribed :-

"Mic jacet Wills Estele quondam senescallus de honoris de Tykull, MCCCLXXII."

VOL. XIII.

D

There is a fine stone coffin, having the upper slab sculptured with a very rich cross flory, the sculpture sharp and well preserved, but the slab is broken.

The font is an octagon, panelled with quatrefoils and shields, on a pedestal formed of clustered shafts, and a band of square flowers round the base.

GENERAL PITT-RIVERS' EXCAVATIONS IN CRANBORNE

CHASE.

By Mrs. ARMITAGE.

How is an epoch-making book to make its epoch when it is privately printed? This is a question which must occur to everyone who studies the three splendid volumes in which General Pitt-Rivers has recorded his excavations in Cranborne Chase. Fortunate is the antiquarian who can get hold of these books, for they are not in the market, and though the author has been very generous in presenting them to various public libraries, there are no doubt many antiquarian societies which have never heard of them. It seems desirable, therefore, to give a brief account of their contents.

General Pitt-Rivers has long been known as an able archæologist, and invaluable papers from his hand, under his earlier name of Colonel Lane-Fox, are to be found scattered through the journals of our antiquarian and anthropological societies. He took the name of Rivers when he inherited the Rivers estate in 1880. Fortune is not often so kind as to place an ardent archæologist in a district teeming with prehistoric remains, and to endow him with ample means and leisure for the task of exploration. But to these advantages General Pitt-Rivers unites others which are (as the French would say) quite otherwise important: a long training in minute observation, a unique experience in the excavation of earthworks, a military eye which sees points in the construction of a rampart which would be hidden from an ordinary observer; and above all, a scientific mind which refuses to generalize without accurate data, and which will spare no pains to get the data accurate. During the whole period of these excavations the workmen were closely superintended either by General Pitt-Rivers himself or by one of his trained assistants; the position of every object found was carefully noted; bones or wooden fragments, which were too rotten to be moved, were measured before being disturbed, so that no scrap of knowledge might be lost. General Pitt-Rivers is so well aware how much knowledge has been lost through explorers not observing the right facts, that he has sought to guard against this in his work by tabulating all his finds so minutely as to anticipate future questions by an exact record of their position and character. Moreover, every fragment of the slightest importance has been carefully drawn to illustrate these volumes; the drawings of the skulls alone being a valuable contribution to craniology.

The first two volumes are chiefly occupied with an account of the excavation of two Romano-British villages on the Rushmore estate. This excavating has been no nibbling; every foot of ground has been dug over, so that nothing has been left unexplored. Hence a fairly complete picture has been obtained of the civilization of the inhabitants of these villages. It is as follows.

The villages appear to have had no defences, but had quite an elaborate system of drains to carry off the surface water. The houses were built of daub and wattle, and were probably round, but some had flat sides, and were plastered and painted. Timber was used in house-building, with iron nails and clamps. Rude imitations of Roman hypocausts were found under a few of the houses. From the general absence of weapons (only two spear-points having been found), a peaceful and settled state of society may be deduced. The inhabitants fed chiefly on domesticated animals, eating even the horse, and very seldom the deer. Their tools were of iron. They grew wheat in small enclosures round their villages, and ground it upon stone querns. They spun thread, wove it on the spot, and sewed it with iron needles. There were indications of comfort and even of refinement; in each village one quarter appeared to have been inhabited by persons of a higher class. Fragments of red Samian ware of the finest quality, which would be equal to our china, were found; also bronze handles and bosses which must have belonged to chests; glass vessels, and games of draughts. One brooch which was found was of the very finest mosaic. Oysters were eaten, which at such a distance from the coast, implies a certain degree of luxury. A number of iron styli showed that some inhabitants at least were able to read and write. No traces of Christianity were found. Two skeletons, found in a ditch, had so many large stones about them as to suggest the idea that their owners had been stoned to death. Nearly one-eighth of the inhabitants had died violent deaths. The number of skeletons of new-born children suggests that infanticide was not uncommon, and reminds us of the boxes of dead babies which Mr. Petrie found so frequently in excavating the Egyptian city of Kahun. The coins which were unearthed show that the villages were occupied up to the time of Constantine, and one of them up to the year

350.

The dead were buried in pits, which appear to have been originally dug for refuse-pits, and used as graves when they had become filled up. Some were buried in the crouched position so common in prehistoric burials, others were extended, and some appear to have been tossed in without any ceremony at all. No orientation was observable. But it is the character of these skeletons which forms the most important discovery and the greatest puzzle in the excavation of these villages. Their small stature, averaging about 5 feet 2 inches for men, and very much less for women, their slender bones, the form and above all the length of their skulls, lead irresistibly to the conclusion (though General Pitt-Rivers is cautious about drawing it) that they belonged to the same race as the mysterious dolico-cephalous people whose bones we find in the long barrows which abound in Dorset and Wilts. Dr. Garson, who has examined the skulls, pronounces them to be of a mixed type, but inclines to the belief that we have here to deal with a crossing between the Roman and the early dolico-cephalic British race," and not with any crossing with Celtic tribes. Many observers had already declared that there was a survival of this long-headed, small-featured, short-statured type in Dorset at the present day, and General Pitt-Rivers says that his personal observations confirm this. A few brachycephalic skulls were found in the villages, pronounced to be rather of Roman than Celtic type. This suggests at once the idea that we have in these villages the Roman colonist or steward, working the estate with a troop of slaves who belonged to the ancient neolithic race, the people of the long barrows, whose blood had become a little mixed with that of their Roman masters. The discovery is one of