whatever is calculated to throw light on the past, should possess some value. The investigations of these traces of earliest population, carry us back far before the date of any written history, and prove that there lie around us, on the unbroken soil, as well as in the later alluvial formations, clear and intelligible records of the character and habits, and of the amount of civilization of the aboriginal tribes of Europe and the British Isles. Intelligent chronologists have thought themselves successful in tracing the passage of the Celtic tribes towards the western parts of the Old World, 2100 years before Christ, and Higgins, one of the ablest writers on this subject, in treating of the Celtic Druids, has brought forward evidence to prove their colonization of Britain about 1600 years before the Christian era. It is not necessary here to do more than merely indicate the nature of the argument on which such speculations are based. The profound astronomical knowledge of the Druids, is recorded by many writers, as a well established fact. Its rudiments were, in all probability, brought with them from the plains of central Asia, the cradle of early science; and they are even thought to have understood the principle of the telescope,-the foundation of modern astronomical discovery. The chronological calculations to which we allude, refer accordingly to the religious festivals of the Druids, the dates of which were affected by that slow movement of the seasons through the signs of the zodiac, caused by the precession of the equinoxes. The direct archæological evidence amply confirms these speculations by proving the existence of a native population in Britain at a very early period.

The subject is one of curious interest, leading us to this striking chronological coincidence, that, just about the time when the aged patriarch Jacob took his journey into Egypt to behold his long lost son, the nomadic Celts were crossing the English channel, and peopling

the savage coasts of the British Isles. It gives new life to our ancient annals, long buried in fable and error. We behold in idea, the British Druids raising their ponderous altars and temples amid our northern forests, while the priests of Isis were consecrating on the banks of the Nile the giant monuments of ancient Thebes, and while the great Jewish lawgiver was setting up the pillars of the twelve tribes in the wilderness of Sinai.

The evidence from whence we trace the records of the eastern wanderers who first disputed with the wolf and the wild boar of the primeval forest, their right to the uncultivated soil of our insular home, while it confirms such curious speculations, also satisfies us that these rude aboriginal tribes were almost destitute of any rudiments of the arts of civilization. In Denmark, in Ireland, and in the north of Scotland, the evidences of this primeval race abound to a degree unknown in other parts of Europe where the Roman invasion has obliterated many of the traces of aboriginal occupants; but they are also of very frequent occurrence in England; though the greater attractions found there in the remains of the Roman invaders have too frequently led to their neglect.

The evidences we possess of the national character and habits, and of the various degrees of civilization of the aborigines of Great Britain, are derived from their ancient dwellings and sepulchres, from cromlechs, barrows, cairns, and tumuli; and from their weapons, ornaments, pottery, &c. Remote as is the period, the history of which we seek by such means to recover, the evidence on which we have to reason is neither scanty nor isolated. Scattered over the uncultivated downs of England and Scotland, there still remain numerous examples of the rude dwellings of our barbarian ancestry, which have escaped the waste of centuries, or the more destructive inroads of the plough, and speak in no uncertain language of the barbarism which surrounded the homes of our forefathers. Ou

the Yorkshire moors, on the extensive plains of Wiltshire, on the Sussex downs, and even on the cultivated hills of Surrey, as well as in Aberdeenshire, Morayshire, and in the Shetland and Orkney Islands, the ruined dwellings of the ancient British savage still speak to us in no uncertain language, of the unskilled and simple state in which he lived.

Sir Richard Colt Hoare, in his valuable work on ancient Wiltshire, remarks: "We have undoubted proofs from history, and from existing remains, that the earlier habitations were pits, or slight excavations in the ground, covered and protected from the inclemency of the weather by boughs of trees and sods of turf." These locations are almost invariably found in groups, showing the gregarious and social habits of man in the rudest stage, but the low state of their occupants, physically and mentally, is apparent from the character of these simple dwellings. They consist of mere excavations in the earth, of a circular or oblong form, averaging about eight feet in diameter. They are excavated generally about three feet below the surface, and surrounded with a raised edge, save where an opening is left, which no doubt served for door and window, and probably for chimney also. On digging in the centre of these pit-dwellings, ashes and charred wood are found, the evidences of their domestic fires, and with them occasionally some flint arrow heads and stone instruments, proving their connection with the earliest race whose weapons are known to us. The ancient names of some of these primitive locations, still preserve an allusion to their characteristics, such as that of Pen Pits, one of the most extensive of them in Wiltshire. They are exceedingly common in Scotland, in the neighbourhood of the British camps, crowning such heights as the Campsie and Lammermoor hills. Another kind of dwelling, examples of which also remain in various districts of Britain, may be considered as the first

stage in advance of these primitive huts. They also consist of pits, but edged with stones, and occasionally accompanied with small circular field inclosures as if indi cating the rudiments of a pastoral life, in the domestication of animals and the protection of them, as well as their multiplication, under the direct care of their owners. The use of stone in the construction of these habitations, marks the first stage in the progress of their builders, and this appears ultimately to have led to extensive changes in the habits of the early Britons. From whatover motive, however, it may have arisen; their dwellings are still found to be subterranean, while some of them are on so large a scale as to suggest the probability of their being adapted to the habits of a people who sheltered themselves like the Esquimaux and the Greenlander, from the inclemency of a northern winter. Professor

Stuart gives, in the second volume of the Archæologia Scotica, an account of some very curious and little noticed remains in Aberdeenshire, consisting of a number of subterraneous habitations spread over an extensive district of that country. The situation appears to have originally been a forest, from many large trunks of trees still dug up there; but it is now chiefly dry moorland. The roofs of these subterranean houses are on a level with the surrounding ground, so that they are only discovered from time to time by the plough striking against some of the stones that compose them. The only entrance appears to have been between two large stones placed in a sloping direction at one end, between which the entrant must slide through an opening about eighteen inches wide, to a depth of about six feet, when he finds himself in a large vault, frequently upwards of thiry feet long, and from eight to nine feet wide. Upwards of fifty of these have been found in one district. The walls incline inwards so as to approach the form of an arch, and across these are laid large stones of five or

six feet in length, and frequently above a ton in weight. Where the ground in the neighbourhood of these ancient cave-dwellings has escaped the inroads of the plough, the small earthen inclosures already described are very frequently found in their neighbourhood. Some writers have contended that these alone are the remains of the native dwellings, while the subterranean structures were used as granaries, and sometimes as places of retreat and concealment from an enemy. Their chief value to us now are as the indications of the amount of skill, and the degree of civilization existing at the period to which we may see reason to assign them.

Leaving these, however, the rude pit and cave-dwellings, which form the aboriginal ruins of Britain, we turn to the consideration of the singular structures commonly known as Drudical temples, and which form the most remarkable characteristics of the period of paganism. Of these probably the most ancient as well as the largest, was at Avebury in Wiltshire; but unhappily a village has been erected on its site, its large unhewn blocks have furnished a convenient quarry for the villagers, and only a few slight remains now attest the rude magnificence of its former state. Fortunately before it had been greatly injured, or its original form and proportions effaced, it was carefully surveyed by Dr. Stukeley. No fewer than six hundred and fifty blocks of stone are believed to have been included in the circles and avenues of this vast temple, varying from five to twenty feet above ground, and from three to twelve feet in breadth and thickness. The singular inclosure formed by these huge stones was surrounded by a deep ditch and a bank of earth, of which considerable remains may still be traced, originally inclosing an area of upwards of twenty-eight acres. The columns of Avebury Temple must have been brought together with much labour, from a great distance. In the neighbouring valleys, larger masses of stone are fre