A manufacture which was probably progressing for many centuries before the Romans invaded Britain, must necessarily have acquired a certain amount of refined ornament as a result of so much experience and practice. We have, indeed, direct evidence that the Romans greatly admired the ornamental baskets of the British, which were exported in large quantities to Rome, and became fashionable appendages among the extravagantly luxurious furniture of the imperial city. Juvenal, writing about A.D. 120, mentions the popularity of these baskets;[12] and that they were productions of the British islanders is distinctly stated by the epigrammatist Martial,[13] who wrote about the end of the first century. It is not improbable that these British baskets were enriched with colour, and even gilding. The former we know was profusely and permanently applied to the persons of the aborigines; the latter—probably one of the earliest discovered metals—was used in the middle of the fifth century for so common a purpose as decorating the roofs of important buildings.[14] It is not, therefore, likely that they were denied as additional means of ornament to these highly valued baskets. When the aboriginal Briton had made his first step in domestic civilization by constructing useful baskets, he would still be subjected to a great inconvenience from the absence of any suitable vessel of sufficient size to convey or store a supply of water. Nature in this country did little to assist him, denying even the slight aid of the gourd and calabash common in warmer climates. To invent a water vessel would thus become to him a necessity; without it he must have been compelled to reside on the bank of some river or brook, in which he and his family could quench their thirst in the same manner and as frequently as the wild animals of the surrounding forests. Nor is it improbable that many generations of people were restricted to such localities for this reason. There appears at first sight to be no possible analogy between baskets and water vessels; yet I apprehend that they are in reality almost twin inventions. The same reasoning which induced the naked Briton to line the wicker walls of his hut with clay for the purpose of excluding cold, would, after some experience, lead to an application of the same material as a coating to the inside of his baskets, which, when dried in the sun or hardened by fire applied to the inside, would then be enabled to retain liquids at least for a time, and consequently permit the desired migration from the immediate margin of a river. This is of course a gratuitous assertion, of no value without proof; but it is also a reasonable induction, and one which is, I venture to think, worthy the considerate attention of archæologists.