THE LATE LIEUT.-GENERAL PITT RIVERS. 249
daughter of the first lord. He was bound by the terms of the will to take the
arms and name of Pitt-Rivers. This property, situated on the southern
slopes of the Wiltshire clowns, has owing to a combination of favourable
circumstances, preserved intact the many ancient remains with which it
abounds. Agriculture which has obliterated such antiquities in most parts,
has, in consequence of the poverty of the soil, done little to disturb the
original character of these monuments of the past in the neighbourhood of
Rushmore. A large portion of the estate also has been saved from disturb-
ance, by the existence of Cranborne Chase, a part of the original forest of the
country, which was formerly protected by special laws, that forbade the con-
version of the land into arable. It seems singularly appropriate that one with
such acquirements and experience, should have succeeded to this estate. Gen.
Pitt-Rivers himself says in the preface of the first volume of his researches in
this district :—"I had an ample harvest before me and with the particular
tastes that I had cultivated, it almost seemed to me as if some unseen hand
had trained me up to be the possessor of such a property, which up to within
a short time of my inheriting it T had little reason to expect."
The health of the General was at this time giving way and while probably
he would have been precluded from carrying out such work in distant spots
he was able at Rushmore to continuously and systematically pursue these
explorations with the great advantages derived from permanent residence in a
district.
The record of this later work is contained in four handsome
volumes, copies of which the Essex Field Club library is, through the
generosity of the General, fortunate enough to possess. Some critics have
quarrelled with the great elaboration and detail of these works. The author,
however, considered it better to err on the side of redundancy, noting
much that may appear insignificant to us at present, but which may at some
future time of more developed knowledge in these matters prove to be
valuable historic evidence. He himself says in the introduction to Vol. I. :—
"It will, perhaps, be thought by some that I have recorded the excavation of
this village [Woodcuts] and the finds that have been made in it with un-
necessary fulness, and I am aware that I have done it in greater detail than
has been customary but my experience as an excavator has led me to think
that investigations of this nature are not generally sufficiently searching, and
that much valuable evidence is lost by omitting to record them carefully."
" Excavators, as a rule, record only those things which appear to them
important at the time, but fresh problems in Archaeology and Anthropology
are constantly arising, and it can hardly fail to have escaped the notice of
anthropologists, especially those who, like myself, have been concerned with
the morphology of art, that, on turning back to old accounts in search of evid-
ence, the points which would have been most valuable have been passed over
from being thought uninteresting at the time."
The spirit which actuated the General in his researches was solely the
genuine scientific idea of gaining historic evidence and he had a most
healthy contempt for the spirit of relic grubbing and curiosity collecting. "In
my judgment," he says, "a fragment of pottery, if it throws light on the
history of our own. country and people, is of more interest to the scientific
collector of evidence in England, than even a work of art and merit that is
associated only with races that we ate remotely connected with."