The research of antiquaries may be good or bad. What has it done for the life of these clapper bridges? Has it proved that the present ones are probably younger than the Middle Ages, but that they had many predecessors going back to pre-Roman times? On the other hand, have antiquaries proved that in the Middle Ages a primitive phase of building was revived in Dartmoor, partly because it was good enough for the traffic, partly because it was inexpensive? The absence of lime on Dartmoor would influence the mediæval settlers and govern their building work. But in this discussion it matters not whether the present bridges be old or young; in either case they represent primeval methods. Between the Bronze Period and the Middle Ages all the earliest slab bridges may have disappeared; if so, then settlers on Dartmoor brought with them knowledge enough of cromlechs to recall the Iberian stonecraft, just as in modern times architects have revived phases of Gothic and phases of Classic. Every possibility is entertaining, but why is it that antiquaries in their remarks on the clapper bridges try to be elusive as well as dogmatic? For example, Mr. William Crossing is of opinion that the larger clapper bridges have had their age overestimated probably because their rough and massive appearance makes them very striking. Why “probably”? He adds that they are mostly in the line of pack-horse tracks, and were probably built by farm settlers. “Probably” again! Yet he gives no evidence. Even Mr. Baring-Gould is equally dogmatic in devious assertions that have no value to any architect. Like Mr. Crossing, he attributes the “clappers” to the period of pack-horses, and sees nothing in them to indicate a great antiquity. What next? Is primitive stonework insufficiently antique whatever its age may be? And who is to estimate the age of rude granite blocks? I have summed up with fairness the views of architects, and they ought to hold the field in the judgment of all pontists. The antiquarian talk about pack-horse tracks has no cogency, for the prehistoric tracks over Dartmoor are the first pathways along which the controversy must ramble. A pontist, then, when visiting Dartmoor, has to do four things. 1. To visualise the farm life of the Bronze Age; 2. To reconnect it with the rivers and with the necessary trade in wood for household fires and for tool handles; 3. Then he will realise that bridges were essential, and that they would be made with the granite blocks which Nature had provided.