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the N.W. edge of a rough circular inclosure, which measures 289 feet by 277 feet. The country around was much inhabited, and according to Pennant this large circular area, which is quite flat, was "a British circus for the exhibition of ancient games."

NOTE. For further details and illustrations of the remains in this and in the adjoining district, the reader is referred to "The Heart of Northern Wales" shortly to be published by the writer.

(To be continued.)

CERTAIN FIXED POINTS

IN

THE PRE-HISTORY OF WALES

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS,

BY HON. PROFESSOR BOYD DAWKINS, D.Sc., F.R.S.
I.-INTRODUCTORY

In taking the chair of the Cambrian Archæological Association I have the honour of succeeding to the position occupied by a long line of illustrious Presidents, who have enlarged the boundaries of history, topography, and architecture, and have thrown light on the darkness that covered the pre-history of Britain and of Europe, at the time when the Association was formed. Among them are several of my personal friends and fellow - workers, Basil Jones, Babington, G. T. Clark, and Freeman, who have gone before, and Rhys, and Howorth, who are still nobly carrying forward the lamp of knowledge handed to them by their predecessors. Besides, however, using their work for the purposes of this address, I have entered into the labours of the many workers, Owen Stanley, Lloyd, Pritchard, Romilly Allen, Way, Phillimore, Barnwell, Thomas, Willoughby Gardner, and others, who have made it possible for me to treat of the pre-history of Wales.

The Cambrian Archæological Association was founded at the beginning of the great scientific renascence in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when antiquarian researches were being reduced to system, and its growth coincides with the period in which archæology became a science, ruled, like the rest, by the laws of a strict induction. It has, indeed, largely contributed to the renascence, not only by its work, but by its example, followed by the many societies and clubs throughout Wales, now exploring the antiquities of their several districts, and collecting materials to be embodied later by the Royal Commission, presided over by Sir John Rhys, into an Archæological Domesday of Wales. It was in the caves and cairns of Wales that I found my call to the study of pre-history, and Wales gave me a standpoint from which I have dealt with the general questions of the successive civilisations, and the sequence of races, in the British Isles and in Western Europe. It is, therefore, with special pleasure that I accept the honour of being President in the land I call my own, although I cannot lay claim -having been born on Offa's Dyke-to be more than "a Marcher."

The recent installation of Prince Edward as our very own Prince is present in all our minds, and as President I offer him the homage of the Cambrian Association, of the loyal Welsh people who are doing their best to throw light on the pre-history and the history of the Principality. And in this latter connection we must note two important contributions, made since the last meeting-the work of Professor J. E. Lloyd, in which the story of our country is unfolded from the earliest times down to the Edwardian Conquest, and The Military Aspect of Roman Wales, by Professor Haverfield, in which he has placed before us the Roman Conquest as marked by their forts. Both are works worthy of the seats of learning from which they came our new University at Bangor and the venerable University of Oxford.

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I propose to deal in the course of this address with certain fixed points in the pre-history of Wales that begins at the close of the remote period known by the geologists as Pleistocene, and ends with the Roman Conquest. I shall concentrate my attention on the facts that throw light on the evolution of the Welsh people, from the various races who have in succession

1 A History of Wales, 2 vols., 8vo, Longmans, 1911.

2 Military Aspects of Roman Wales, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion, March 18, 1909.

established themselves in Wales in the Neolithic, Bronze, and Pre-historic Iron Ages.

The Palæolithic men, who lived in the caves of Flint, Glamorgan, and Pembrokeshire, in the Pleistocene Age, are beyond the limits of our inquiry, because they vanished long before the pre-historic period, without leaving any mark in the succeeding races. The inhabitants of Wales in the Neolithic Age must first be considered.

II. THE GEOGRAPHY OF WALES IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE.

When the Neolithic hunters and herdsmen found their way into Wales, the whole land, up to a level of about 2000 ft. above the sea, with the exception of stretches of heather and grass in the woodlands, was clad in a dense forest of Scotch fir, oak, yew, birch, ash, and holly, varied by copses of hazel; and the marshes, flanking the alder-lined streams and rivers, made it difficult to traverse the valleys. Consequently, they first settled in the ranges of hills, such, for example, as those of Colwyn and Denbigh, and the higher grounds generally, throughout Wales, which are marked by their huts, camps, and tombs. Their first clearings were in the uplands, and the first tracks, that ultimately developed into roads, linking one settlement with another, were on the ridges, or the lines of least resistance, and avoided the marshes at the bottom of the valleys, which were practically impassable.

These forests extended seawards to a level of at least 60 ft. O.D. below the present coast line, being now represented by the submarine forest bed at various points from the mouth of the Dee, past Rhyl and Colwyn Bay and Anglesey. In Cardigan Bay it probably gave rise to the legends of the lost land of Wales, and in St. Bride's Bay it excited the wonder of Gerald De Barri.1 It also extended along both

1 Itinerarium Cambriæ, I, 13.

Strahan, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond., 1896.

sides of the Bristol Channel, being met with in the Barry Docks at a depth of 35 ft. below the present sea level, and on the shore at Porlock at 22 ft. below high water mark. In both these places the forest

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is proved to be Neolithic by the discovery of imple

ments.

We may, therefore, represent the Neolithic geography of Wales as in Fig. 1, in which the Clwyd entered the 1 Dawkins Early Man in Britain, pp. 249-51.

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