Journal of Proceedings.
lix
that to be in such places would soon destroy anyone by disease.
Doubtless it would if the inhabitant never earne out; but that people do
live underground for lengthened periods—and in straitened space too
—was well known; and as a matter of fact he had himself suffered
nothing from prolonged visits to Deneholes, visiting one for days at a
time and burning hundreds of candles and magnesium lights and
entertaining crowds of guests—not for a momentary pop down and up
again, but for lengthened stays of many hours. The place got hot
indeed, but the next day it was clear of foul air and was quite fresh.
Yet he did not for a moment think that people constructed the
enlarged caverns at Hangman's Wood and Stankey for dwellings, if
even they were occasionally so used. Mr. Spurrell then spoke of the
objection raised to the theory which regarded the deneholes as
granaries, that the dampness of the soil would favour the growth of
destructive fungi or induce destructive sweating; and gave his reasons
for holding that the objection was unsound, quoting evidence to show
that corn had been kept in such places for great lengths of time. He
next considered the likelihood of the deneholes having been mines for
chalk or flint. He could not think that they were dug for flint, for
it had been a universal rule in all mining operations co begin the
excavation where the object or mineral sought was to be found at the
surface, and then the layer or vein was followed. Never before the
days of scientific geology—that was to say, within the last hundred
years—had it been inferred that minerals like flint could be profitably
sought under a different rock at a lengthened distance from the point
at which they appeared on the surface; and not even now could it be
guessed with any probability of success in the search that a vein of
flint of good quality could be found more than a few yards from the
spot at which the layer was visible externally. How much less, then,
could the pits at Hangman's Wood be considered mines, when perhaps
their most striking feature was the comparative absence of flint layers ;
and how much more did it appear likely that the chalk rock there was
found suitable to some purpose, which was assisted by the absence of
impediments to excavation such as would be found in the layers of flint.
Moreover the true flint mines of Grimes Graves, Cissbury, and others,
in no case resembled the specialised form of a denehole. As to these
places having been mines for chalk, that was the very latest use to
which this form of excavation had been put, and probably the use of
chalk in agriculture was rather to be traced to the increased fertility of
the soil on which the chalk from the excavation had been spread than
the excavations had been made to supply an agricultural demand for
chalk. In the course of his paper Mr. Spurrell sought to establish
conclusions which he summed up as follows :—The Deneholes could be
traced back through a period when they were at once grain stores and
means for obtaining chalk as manure, through a period when they
might be both stores and occasional dwellings, to a time in which they