What exhibition can compare for beauty with the rainbow arch spreading in complete proportions from one side of the landscape to the other? What magazine of jewels can but faintly suggest the glory of a full starry night in the dry frosty air?

A needful part of the full engagement of the country is to be an intelligent spectator of the great laboratory process whereby the earth provides her vegetarian annual banquet for the maintenance of organic life. The peeping of the leaflet through the sod, or the breaking of the bud on the bush are the preparatory steps to the copious prodigality of the summer.

The wild grasses in the ditches by the road side, and the solid compact of tubular fibres which build up the timber trunks, yield surprises to the observer; the one from the fairy-like beauty of the plumage, the other from the massive grandeur of the boughs and foliage; fruits and flowers give perfume, colour, and flavour in profusion, and grain and legumina invoke the prudence which safeguards the security of life when the harvest is cleared from the earth.

But what are the drawbacks to the panorama of beauty and grace?-its temporary duration. Art in stone, metal, and painting endeavours, with more or less of success, to perpetuate the choicest of the views which Nature lavishes around us, but little opportunities for art belong to the retired ruralist. The successive unfolding of the hidden principles of Nature, forms at the hands of her noble students one of the pleasurable occupations of the town. The resident in the country must be content to receive his knowledge thereof through the agency of the Press.

In the frequent communication with his fellow men the Londoner finds the time pass with unconscious swift

ness, imposing no exercise however languid his attention. All is busy around him, and the mind yields to the exciting influence without the need of self-exertion. The engagement of the country is, that every object and every day appeals to one's latent intelligence, and that in such abundance that life is passed before a fragment is fully known.

The chief delight of the country is, that the weary struggle for position, which money is the easiest method of possessing, and which the influence of example imposes on the resident in town, is relaxed, and the sense of living with thankfulness for its privileges is a grateful substitute for the race of expectancy which suits the energy of youth but galls the feebleness of age.

JOHN JONES.

CHAPTER XIV.

EXCAVATIONS IN CRANBORNE CHASE, WILTS AND DORSET.*

BY E. WALFORD, M.A., ETC.,

Formerly Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford; Editor of "The County Families,” The Windsor Peerage," etc.

As it may be reasonably presumed that nothing which relates to the surface of any district of these Islands can be void of interest in the eyes of our readers, it is probable that they will be glad to be introduced to the two magnificent quarto volumes in which General PittRivers has placed on permanent record-we wish that we could write the word "published"-the results of a variety of surface excavations which he has conducted in his own neighbourhood during the past ten years.

The General, in whom many readers of these pages will identify the Colonel Lane-Fox who has so long been known as an anthropologist, and of late years as the chief Government Inspector of ancient monuments in this country, was forced to assume his new name in 1880, on inheriting the estates of Rushmore, on the borders of Dorsetshire and Wiltshire, upon the death of the last Lord Rivers.

He had not long entered into possession of his new property before he found out, in the course of his first

* This article is based on two (4to) privately printed volumes by Lieut.-Gen. Pitt-Rivers, D.C.L., F.R.S., etc.

surveys, that he was the owner of a property which might be developed with sundry results of a scientific rather than of a mere pecuniary nature, and illustrative of a period in the history of Great Britain about which but little is known. No one can travel through South Wiltshire, or even cross Salisbury Plain, especially in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge, without seeing that its broad expanse of turf is dotted over with grave mounds more or less distinct, and this to an extent quite unknown in other parts of England. Accordingly General PittRivers, who in early life had been devoted to military surveying, resolved to employ his leisure time in endeavouring to throw additional light on the work of excavating some of those mounds and barrows which lay round about him, and even in his own park, in such plentiful abundance. He soon found out that there were tumuli of Romano-British date and character, most of which were untouched, having been fortunately preserved through the accident of the surface not having been broken apparently for very many centuries, in consequence of the poorness of the soil for agricultural purposes. And this was true not only of his own estate of Rushmore, but of a large district closely adjoining it and "marching with " it, namely, that long known as Cranborne Chase. Of this district he tells us that it included between 700,000 and 800,000 acres, and pastured about 12,000 head of fallow deer, which were protected by a variety of rights by ancient customs which had the force of law. In spite of, or possibly in consequence of, this very fact, it was a very lawless district; poaching was a trade and almost a profession, and the enforcement of the game-laws led to such frequent collisions between the keepers and the poaching fraternity that the second Lord Rivers thought fit to abandon his rights

and to head a local movement for the abolition of the Chase, which was therefore broken up and "disfranchised" just sixty years ago. "Since then," writes General PittRivers, "many of the parts marked on the old Ordnance Survey as forest' have been converted into pasture, and in more prosperous times for agriculture into arable, to be laid down again into grass in consequence of the depression of the agricultural interest at the present time."

Much of the land around his own mansion, however, retained its forest scenery, so that the mounds which dotted its surface were uninjured, though here and there the roots of the monarchs of "the forest primeval" had found their way among them, damaging not only the sides of the graves, but even the fragile urns and the skulls contained in them. He was, therefore, not long in commencing action, and found himself for once, as few men in this world do find themselves, "the right man in the right place." At once he began to organize a staff of assistants who had a taste for such work, and whom he trained to the task of a scientific investigation of the entire surface lands with that thoroughness which is necessary in all archæological investigations. That this was necessary and not superfluous is proved by the fact that only a few years previously a village in his own immediate neighbourhood had been visited, inspected, and reported on by the members of the Royal Archæological Institute, in one of its summer congresses, when they found not a single pit or skeleton, whilst he himself had, or rather has, discovered no less than 95 pits and 15 skeletons, in a more or less perfect state. He adds: "One circumstance which makes the relics found in these villages so valuable for reference is the fact of their being entirely of one continuous period. The ground having never been