The salutary respect which was paid to the dead by primitive folk, and the superstitious beliefs, cherished, half in fear, half in hope, were centred around burial-places. These are facts to be graven on the tablets of the memory of every archaeologist. Realizing how potent, even to-day, are the traditions of ghosts, and fairies, and hidden treasure, wherever the dead are known to lie, and remembering that folk-memory has frequently proved to be sound in the identification of graves previously overlooked by the antiquary, we are bound to conclude that nothing short of the extermination of the whole of the inhabitants of a country-side could completely wipe away such recollections. Even to-day, after several centuries of the printed book, and several decades of the day school, the most definite legends, and those with the greatest living force, are those which the peasant connects with graves and ghosts. How much stronger was this kind of tradition when delivered orally from father to son, and when all folk alike were under the spell of superstition! If it be objected that the majority of Gothic churches, perhaps even the majority of existing Saxon churches, do not stand near pagan burial-grounds, that the general rule was to establish new cemeteries at a distance from the old, one would naturally answer that it is just these exceptions which prove that the chain of continuity was never absolutely broken. The examples where old sites were seized upon might, at first, be relatively numerous, but they would tend to become fewer and fewer, as adherence to ancient heathen custom weakened. A time would arrive when, save to combat a prejudice, the pagan spots would be completely shunned, and all churches would be built on soil newly hallowed. The evidence must be judged as a whole, and especial weight will have to be allowed for the records of holy wells, which we must review before closing the chapter. A combination of features will often impress the most sceptical. When we find, hidden away in a wilderness of moors and hills at Bewcastle, in the Northern corner of Cumberland, the remains of a Mediaeval castle close to a restored twelfth century church, while the shaft of a seventh century cross stands hard by, and when we notice that a Roman camp of hexagonal outline--a rare feature--encloses all these objects[237], we are justified in tracing a causal connection. What, but deliberate purpose, conspired to make warrior, churchman, and feudal lord, one after the other, settle in this remote fastness? Confronted with testimony of this kind, the burden of proof must rest upon those who would see, here and there, a distinct hiatus in the history of social development. A parallel may be drawn from the science of organic evolution. Recent researches have taught us that we must be prepared to encounter “mutations” in the lines of descent. It is also undeniable that ethnology may present us with