NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
77
irregularities as regards the size and direction of the galleries,
but one general plan of working prevails throughout. One
published account of these caves states that the positions of
some seventy denehole shafts appear in the ground
above them. But the plan shows that any hollows giving that
impression must be either surface workings for sand and gravel,
or indicate the positions of the downfalls of sand into the chalk
beneath. For in themselves these hollows furnish no evidence
whatever of the existence of denehole shafts, though similar
cavities may be found at the surface when deneholes exist. In
this case the plan shows no trace of any intersection of deneholes
in the workings, a fact decisive against the denehole hypothesis.
Judging from the plan, the area occupied by these excavations
must be between fifteen and twenty acres. And the point in
them most remote from their present entrance is about 300 yards
away, if measured in a straight line. It is also noticeable that
though the same general plan of working prevails throughout, the
galleries within a certain distance of the entrance are on the
average higher and broader than those which are more distant.
And to the most remote belong the little group here given, to
show the general arrangement of the galleries.
These caves were visited by the Geologists' Association on
April 26th, 1902, Messrs. T. V. Holmes and C. W. Osman being
the directors and reporters of the excursion, an account of which
may be seen in Proc. Geol. Assoc, vol. xvii. The reporters look
on the caves as workings for chalk. In the Journal of the British
Archaeological Association for December, 1903, there is a paper by
Mr. W. J. Nichols, in which they are considered to be deneholes.
And in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association for
August, 1904, there is a paper about them by Messrs. T. E. and
R. H. Forster, in which the view that they are excavations for
obtaining chalk is upheld. It is to this Mr. T. E. Forster that
we are indebted for the plan which so decisively settles their
affinities.
MISCELLANEA.
An Ancient Municipal Enterprise.—Our esteemed
member, Mr. J. C. Shenstone, F.L.S., contributed to the Saturday
Westminster Gazette of August 12th, 1905, an interesting article
under the above title, from which we cull a few paragraphs :—
" It frequently happens that when the full force of some great social