dwellings, and whole clusters of them were recorded and mapped on the
Yorkshire Wolds, and a British metropolis of them, Caer Penselcoit, was
reported in Somersetshire. Habitations sunk deep in the rock, with only
a roof above ground. But the spade has cracked these archaeological
theories like filberts, and has proved that the pits in the wolds were
sunk after iron ore, or those in Somerset were burrowings for the
extraction of chert. [Footnote: Atkinson, "Forty Years in a Moorland
Parish." Lond. 1891, p. 161, _et seq._ Some pits are, however, not
so dubious. At Hurstbourne, in Hants, pit habitations have been
explored; others, in Kent and Oxfordshire, undoubtedly once dwelt in.
In one of the Kentish pits 900 flakes and cores of flint were found.
The Chysoyster huts in Cornwall and the "Picts houses" in Scotland were
built up of stones, underground.] But the original paleolithic man did
not get beyond the cavern or the rock-shelter. This latter was a
retreat beneath an overhanging stratum of hard rock, screened against
the weather by a curtain of skins. And why should he wish to change so
long as these were available? We, from our advanced position, sitting
in padded arm-chairs, before a coal fire, can see that there was room
for improvement; but he could not. The rock-dwelling was commodious,
dry, warm in winter and cool in summer, and it cost him no trouble to
fashion it, or keep it in repair. He had not the prophetic eye to look
forward to the arm-chair and the coal fire. Indeed, at all periods,
down to the present day, those who desire to lead the simple life, and
those who have been reared in these nature-formed dwelling-places, feel
no ambition to occupy stone-built houses. In North Devon the cottages
are reared of cob, kneaded clay, and thatched. A squire on his estate
pulled down those he possessed and built in their place brick houses
with slated roofs. The cottagers bitterly resented the change, their
old mud-hovels were so much warmer. And in like manner the primeval man
would not exchange his _abris_ for a structural dwelling unless