Miscellaneous Notes on Deneholes. 105
mouths, to the depth sometimes of one hundred feet, where
they branch out like the veins of mines; and this kind is
chiefly used in Britain."
I feel that when I state that Mr. Roach Smith's whole case
rests on the passage from Pliny just quoted, some incredulity
may be felt. Yet so it is ! I venture, on the other hand, to
assert that no amount of documentary evidence could possibly
render unnecessary the most thorough exploration of the pits
themselves. But what is the worth even of the documentary
evidence that forms Mr. Smith's sole reliance ? We have
merely the second or third hand information obtained by a
notoriously uncritical collector of scraps of knowledge, who
had himself never visited Britain. And it is almost certain
from Pliny's language—as rendered into English by Mr.
Roach Smith—that Pliny's informant had never descended a
Denehole. For had he done so he could hardly have spoken
of the chambers below as "branching out like the veins of
mines." The regular form and the separation of each Dene-
hole from its neighbour must surely have struck the most
careless observer. While though the old flint workings at
Grimes Graves and Cissbury might be described as "branching
out like the veins of mines," yet their shafts are broad, and
could never have been described, by anyone who saw them as
"like wells, with narrow mouths."
Thus, if the quotation from Pliny formed the only avail-
able evidence of any kind, it would by no means settle the
question as to the original purpose of our Hangman's Wood
pits, being, as it is, about equally applicable to them and to
those at Grimes Graves. But there is other documentary
evidence bearing upon this question. Diodorus Siculus states
that the inhabitants of Britain preserved their harvest by
cutting off the ears of corn and storing them in pits under
ground. For the prevalence of underground storehouses and
habitations in all parts of the world, and in both ancient
and modern times, I need only refer to Mr. Spurrell's well-
known paper in Nos. 152 and 153 of the 'Archeological
Journal.' One point, however, seems well worth noting here
in connection with documentary evidence bearing on our
subject. It is this :—While an ancient writer is hardly likely
to testify to the existence of a (to him) peculiar custom, like
that of storing corn in underground granaries, without sufficient
warrant, his statement that certain peculiar pits in chalk were
for chalk may have no value whatever. For all pits in chalk,
whatever the purpose of their excavators, involve the removal
of the chalk and its utilisation in some way. And the proba-
bility is that Pliny's informant, for example, saw or heard of