That may be the first original sneer at the British climate, the sneer which now takes the form that whenever the sun appears in England it is photographed, lest the inhabitants of the island should forget what it is like. (There is an Australian "drought" story of the same order of humorous exaggeration, that in a certain district the rain from heaven had been withheld so long, and grass had so long disappeared, that when at last relief came and the grass grew the sheep would not eat it, as they did not recognise what it was!) But perhaps Hecatæus was serious. It is not at all unlikely that the gossip Hecatæus had of the Isle of the Hyperboreans came from Phoenician sources, and referred to that south-westerly extremity of Cornwall which gets the full benefit of the warm Gulf Stream, and has in consequence an astonishingly mild climate for its latitude, a climate quite capable of producing sometimes two crops a year. As for sun worship, there are many indications of the practice of its rites in prehistoric Britain. The "Round Towers" which are sprinkled over Ireland can best be explained by a theory of sun worship. Stonehenge, in the south of England, which dates back to about 1500 years B.C., was probably a temple of sun worship. There are the ruins of a temple, possibly of the sun, at Avebury (Wilts.) of even older date. It would be impossible to attempt even to hint at all the evidence in the matter. But what may be accepted quite safely as a fact is, that in prehistoric times the Briton was no laggard in the path of civilisation: that indeed he was among the early pilgrims on that path. Even as far north as the Yorkshire Wolds--it is clear from recent excavations--there was a thick local population of men in the Neolithic Age. The burial mounds of these Neolithic tribes have lately been excavated, and have given much valuable evidence as to the history of Man. The "Ipswich Man," too--the indubitable remains of a man who walked upright and who had skull accommodation for a human brain, discovered in strata of a most remote age of the earth--proves that in the little corner of the world which was to have such a wonderful history in the far future, there were early indications of promise. It is worth while to clear our British ancestors of the reproach of being woad-painted savages at a time of the world's history when every European, almost, had learned at least the use of skins. For those Britons were responsible for that "Celtic fringe" which to-day shows so largely in our poetry and our politics, and in other walks of life. The ancient Briton enters into the making of modern England through the strong traces of his ancestry left in Cornwall, Devon, the Marches of Wales, and elsewhere.