To the original builders who, as is shown elsewhere, thoroughly understood and appreciated the art of sanitation, it is quite probable that these dadoes were considered necessary, especially as these dry masonry walls are the homes of snakes, lizards, and other unpleasant reptiles and creatures which probably were more abundant here three thousand years ago when, as competent scientists affirm, the climate was more humid. Whether for the exclusion of sound, for the securing of privacy, for the protection of their dwellings from reptiles, or to avoid the tearing by rough granite blocks in very narrow passages of such garments as they might have worn, or for the purpose of artistic effect—and these ancients practised several fine arts—the fact has recently been revealed that at any rate some of the ancient walls were once covered with these cement dadoes.[45] • • • • • _Built-up crevices._—On the Acropolis Hill cliffs and boulders form such prominent features that these have often been employed as sides of enclosures. The ancients were in many instances at great pains to build up crevices and fissures in rocks, especially where these are in or near the enclosures. Even small crevices only a foot or so wide, and penetrating into the face of the cliffs and rocks for but two or three feet, the front being the only part giving access to such fissures, are carefully built up flush with the face of the rock. Some large perpendicular fissures in the cliffs have been so built up to an immense height. One fissure on the south side of the Rock Holes Path has been built up for 40 ft. above the ground. This fissure is from 1 ft. to 3 ft. wide. The effect caused by this column of blocks running up the face of the cliff is very strange. Some fissures are so narrow that very small blocks have been used. From some of such fissures the built-up courses have fallen away, leaving a few courses, here and there at different heights wedged in between the sides of the fissures, and occasionally one sees a single block wedged into a fissure at an immense height above any ruin. This building-up of crevices and fissures is to be found almost over the whole face of the hill where no ruins are now to be seen. If two boulders are near together, it may be taken as almost a moral certainty that on examining the boulders they will be found to be connected with a wall, even if the space be only a foot or two wide. In a similar manner the holes under overhanging boulders have been neatly built up so as to effectually hide the hole. The natives have in two or three instances removed sufficient of the blocks to enable them to pass a corpse through, after which, with their peculiar style of building—column form—they have filled up the gaps with walling. • • • • •