cliv Journal of Proceedings.
Mr. Meldola made some remarks upon the chemical nature of the
change which had taken place in these grains. They were quite car-
bonised, and yet retained the form and consistency of fresh grain.
The President said, that as the Essex Field Club was much interested
in any examination of pre-historic pits which might throw light on the
mysterious Deneholes near Grays and elsewhere, he would say a few
words about the well-known Pen Pits, which he had recently visited,
Mr. H. B. Woodward, of the Geological Survey, having taken him and
Mr. F. J. Bennett (Geological Survey) to see them. They were near
Stourhead, on the borders of Wiltshire and Somerset, and consisted of
some hundreds of hollows, mostly cup-shaped, and varying in size from
a diameter of 10 ft. and a depth of 5ft., to a diameter of 20 ft. and a
depth of 10ft., or thereabouts. These hollows are very close together,
and are mainly found on the top of a plateau of Upper Greensand, and
more especially on a side of the plateau much intersected by valleys
sloping down to that of the Stour. They are also seen in these valleys
for a certain distance below the crest of the plateau ; while, looking
eastward across the valley of the Stour, a number of similar pits appear
on the opposite hill side (which is also Upper Greensand), just below
the edge of the plateau. They were aware that there had been much
controversy about these pits, Mr. Kerslake and others holding that this
pit-covered area was the site of an ancient British hill city, while the
excavations of Lieut.-Gen. Pitt Rivers and others have shown, that at
all events some of these pits have been used as mines, from which a
stone suitable for querns, &c, has been extracted. The adherents of the
British hill-city view, however, naturally remark that the same excava-
tions may have served at one time as hut foundations, and at another as
quarries, and that the value of the negative evidence derived from the
non-finding of pottery, bones, &c, may be very easily over-rated, espe-
cially when it is remembered how few pits of the many hundreds existing
have been examined. But, allowing this, it certainly seemed to him that
the position of these holes was utterly fatal to the British city view.
Where ancient hill-forts or cities exist, and they abound in the neigh-
bourhood, the sites chosen are those to which Nature has given special
advantages for that purpose. They are on bold, outlying knolls, or if,
for example, on the line of Chalk escarpment, they are found where
combes, sloping down in opposite directions, almost isolate the site
of the ancient camp. Examples of this kind of camp are Bratton,
Battlesbury, Scratchbury, Winklebury, and many others. But the Pen
Pits occupy part of a plateau not separated from the unoccupied portion
by any natural or artificial ramparts or ditches, and extend down the
sides of the valleys just as far as a certain stone crops out and no further,
though very much further down the hillside than the boundaries of a
hill-city would have been ; while, entirely separated from the mass of
the pits, and on the opposite side of the Stour valley, we see pits along
the hillside on the horizon of this stone, and nowhere else. It seemed