known as Ambresbury Banks, Epping Forest. 65
centre, and the present crest of the rampart has gone back
some feet towards the interior owing to the greater denudation
of the superior slope. The rampart must originally have
been about 10 feet high above the old surface line; it is now
7 feet high, and the relief above the bottom of the ditch must
have been 20 feet. The base of the silting of the anterior
slope may be estimated at about 16 feet, and there is some
indication in the seams of the old interior slope ; but this
measurement is uncertain, as is often the case in British
ramparts. I have not usually found the bottoms of the
ditches of British camps pointed. At Cissbury, Caburn, and
Sleaford, there were flat bottoms along which the people
might traverse, whereas in the earthwork improperly named
Caesar's Camp, near Folkestone, but Norman in its origin,
both ditches were pointed like the present one ; but we have
no sufficient evidence as yet for determining whether there
was any persistency in the form of ditches in British times.
I have always assumed, however, that where the old sides of
the ditches are found to stand at an angle of stability of 45°,
as in the present case, it indicates that the entrenchment was
intended to be more or less a permanent work. I should
mention that my information as to the form of this ditch is
derived entirely from Mr. D'Oyley's reliable section and from
his verbal account of it, and not from personal observation,
as I had left the camp before the bottom of it was excavated.
Whilst excavating the ditch the gentlemen present were
struck with the number of rounded and apparently selected
pebbles, 2 to 3 inches in diameter, which turned up in the
silting near the bottom, and which led them to the conjecture
that they must have been imported for use as sling-stones.
This observation is the more valuable on their part from the
fact that they were not aware at the time that like results
had been obtained from other camps. In the Kentish and
Sussex camps, I had found and recorded the discovery of
similar pebbles in the ditches of works, facts which in those
cases were the more noticeable owing to the soil being chalk,
and so, therefore, not a pebble-producing formation. The
pebbles in these places had been imported from the distant
H