The Ancient Earthworks of the New Forest. By Heywood Sumner.
(Chiswick Press. 20s. net.)—This scholarly book, a veritable labour of love, contains beautifully executed plans and descriptions of all the old earthworks that the author has been able to find in the Now Forest, together with notes on the pottery and other relics that have been dug up, especially at Sloden and other sites near Fording- bridge where the early potters worked. Mr. Sumner classifies the earthworks as defensive camps on high ground like Buckland Rings, shepherds' enclosures, dykes and ditches, miscellaneous earthworks, including the well-known Moot at Downton, and mediaeval parks enclosed for sport, such as the old park of Lynd- hurst. In prehistoric timed the Isle of Wight was joined to the mainland ; the homes of the men who made the barrows between the Beaulieu and Lymington Rivers are now covered by the waters of the Solent. Mr. Sumner has found no physical evidence to sup- port the legend of William the Conqueror depopulating the district to make the New Forest. He might have referred to Mr. Baring's demonstration that the evidence of Domesday Book points to the. same conclusion. The New Forest has always been what it is to-day.
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