in Essex,
a small copse some four acres in extent, there are no fewer than
seventy-two Dene Holes, as close together as possible, their entrance
shafts being not above twenty yards apart. These shafts run vertically
downwards, till the floor of the pit is from eighty to a hundred feet
below the surface of the ground. At the bottom the shaft widens out
into a vaulted chamber some thirty feet across, from which radiate
four, five, or even six lateral crypts, whose dimensions are usually
about thirty feet in length, by twelve in width and height. When the
shafts are closely clustered, the lateral crypts of one will extend to
within a few feet of those belonging to its neighbours, but in no
case do they communicate with them (though the recent excavations of
archaeologists have thus connected whole groups of Dene Holes). Many
theories have been elaborated to account for their existence, but
the data are conclusive against their having been either habitations,
tombs, store-rooms, or hiding-places; and, in 1898, Mr. Charles
Dawson, F.S.A., pointed out that, in Sussex, chalk and limestone
are still quarried by means of identically such pits. The chalk so
procured is found a far more efficacious dressing for the soil than
that which occurs on the surface, and moreover is more cheaply got
than by carting from even a mile's distance. At the present day, as
soon as a pit is exhausted (that is as soon as the diggers dare make
their chambers no larger for fear of a downfall), another is sunk hard
by, and the first filled up with the _debris_ from the second. In the
case of the Dene Holes, this _debris_ must have been required for some
other purpose; and to this fact alone we owe their preservation. It
is probable that the celebrated cave at Royston in Hertfordshire
was originally dug for this purpose, though afterwards used as a
hermitage.

E. 4.--Pytheas is also our authority for saying that bee-keeping was
known to the Britons of his day;[25] a drink made of wheat and honey
being one of their intoxicants. This method of preparing mead (or
metheglin) is current to this day among our peasantry. Another drink
was made from barley, and this, he tells us, they called [Greek:
koyrmi], the word still used in Erse for beer, under the form _cuirm_.
Dioscorides the physician, who records this (and who may perhaps have
tried our national beverage, as he lived shortly after the Claudian
conquest of Britain), pronounces it "head-achy, unwhole