110 Miscellaneous Notes on Deneholes.
large enough to admit a man, and covered by a piece of hard
flaggy stone, this stone being placed just below the vegetable
soil, which is from one to two feet thick. In one of these
holes a considerable amount of blackened corn was found,
mixed with black earth, the latter probably marking the total
decomposition of a much larger quantity. Three old querns
have been found close by the beehive-shaped pits, about
twelve or fourteen of the latter having been discovered. The
general resemblance of these Portland pits to those of
Southern India is very striking.
Of course there are plenty of differences in detail between
rock-granaries such as these and Deneholes. Details, how-
ever, necessarily vary with the geology of a place. And it is
important to note the universal prevalence, now or formerly,
of these rock-granaries, whether entered laterally or vertically,
whether in gravel, granite, or chalk. They are, besides,
necessarily akin to Deneholes in this, that both alike belong
to the class consisting of pits excavated for some domestic
purpose or purposes, and not for the sake of the material
derived from them.
Norfolk.
My friend Mr. H. B. Woodward, of the Geological Survey,
has kindly sent me the following account of the discovery of
some buried wheat near Lammas, in E. Norfolk. It is given
in a letter from Thomas Munro (?) to the late Samuel Wood-
ward, dated 29th Aug., 1834. Mr. Munro thus writes:—
"It was discovered on the side of a lane a little to the left of
the road leading through Lammas to Buxton, where an
acquaintance of mine was allowed to dig sand and gravel for
top-dressing an adjacent meadow, and the quantity was not
less than eight or ten quarters...... An oak tree of
considerable age grew near the spot, the fibrous roots of
which had insinuated themselves among the wheat, which
lay in two distinct compartments at the bottom of the
sloping bank, separated by a natural division running trans-
versely through the pit."