the Charybdis of bald fact. Messrs. Bateman and Carrington, for instance, aspired no higher than writing a journal of harrow-opening, and though "Ten Years' Diggings" and the "Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire" are most useful storehouses of information, it is manifest that many little matters of importance either escaped notice, or were unrecorded through their avowed disregard for any theory. Canon Greenwell's review of facts, and the deductions from them, written as it is with a knowledge of most that has been done by others, is both a key to his own work and a fairly complete epitome of the science.
The plan of the book is as follows:—First there is an "introduction" which contains the general review of fact and theory we have just referred to. Next is an account of the author's own work, the thorough examination of 234 tumuli or burial mounds. Nearly three-fourths of these (the actual number is 162) are or were in Yorkshire, the East Riding containing the great majority. The remainder belong to the counties of Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumberland, Durham, and Gloucester. The concluding pages are occupied by Professor Rolleston's description of the skulls and his observations on them, with an appendix on the pre-historic fauna and flora.
The introduction and the appendix are not the least valuable parts of the book. We have already stated the high estimation in which the former must be held. But of course all the conclusions of the authors will not meet with general acceptance. Now and then an imperfect acquaintance with well-known facts is disclosed, "British Barrows" does not profess to be a fill account of pre-historic Archæology. The complete text-book of the science has yet to he written. As an instance of oversight, one case will suffice. Every practical barrow-digger knows that the ordinary "rat" of the tumuli is the Avicola amphibia, and will feel surprise that Prof. Rolleston seems to consider the fact a discovery. This little creature is so constant a member of the barrow-fauna that it has been said by one of our greatest practical archæologists to be the invariable comrade of the human tenants of the tumuli. Again, in the majority of cases, the water-rats' bones were certainly not carried into mounds by a pole-cat, as Prof. Rolleston supposes. Their calvariæ are usually intact, and there can be no doubt that the animals lived and died amidst the loose stones of the cam. Their abundant presence is a strong testimony to the humidity of the climate in ancient times. But such a shortcoming as this is after all insignificant, and the mention of it as a fault will show how few grave errors are to be found in the book.
Turning to weightier matters we cannot altogether concur in the doubt Canon Greenwell expresses as to whether any of the round barrows are of the Neolithic period. The long barrows have been almost universally attributed to this era, and the author's conclusion as to his own work, (including fourteen of these mounds.) and the work of others, is that these tumuli belong to a time antecedent to a knowledge of metal. The round harrows, however, be seems at the outset to class as all belonging to the Bronze period ; though he afterwards qualifies this view, and, indeed, almost commits himself to the opposite opinion. There can, we think, be but little doubt that a Neolithic period existed in Britain, just
