but wider river than at present, appears to have had a pile-dwelling population established on its shallows at various favourable points. At Kew, near the mouth of the Brent, piles have been disclosed to view, marking as is supposed the site of an ancient “water-town;” and at Barnes, in the opposite bend of the stream, similar remains have been observed associated with flints, celts, and other primitive relics. Well-authenticated lacustrine sites have been discovered at Wretham Mere, in Norfolk;[18] at Barton Mere, near Bury St. Edmund’s;[19] on Cold Ash Common, Berks;[20] and in Llangorse lake, near Brecon, South Wales.[21] Dr. Munro is of opinion that the lake dwellings of Scotland were erected by the semi-Romanized Celtic inhabitants, as a means of protection when they were left to contend against the attacks of the Angles, the Picts, and the Scots, upon the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain; but when Cæsar arrived on the banks of the Thames the use of wooden stakes, palisading, and piles, for defensive purposes, was, as described by him,[22] common amongst the Britons--defences which were in fact of the nature of the palisading with which Irish and Scotch lake dwellings were surrounded. These works seem to have been of an enduring character, for the Venerable Bede, writing at the commencement of the eighth century, states that some of the stakes retained their position even in his day. A very interesting account given by Adulfeda, Syrian Prince and historian, who wrote about the commencement of the fourteenth century, depicts the Apamæan lake as a collection of small sheets of water of little depth, linked together by huge swamps. The string of lakelets was margined with dense borders of reeds, flags, and willows, and abounded in game and fish. Adulfeda describes the most northerly lake of this chain as “commonly called the lake of the Christians, because it is inhabited by Christian fishermen who live here on the lake in wooden huts built upon piles.”[23]