It has been suggested that the flint-bearing character of the Wolds made this part of Yorkshire a district for the manufacture of implements and weapons for the inhabitants of a much larger area, and no doubt the possession of this ample supply of offensive material would give the tribe in possession a power, wealth, and permanence sufficient to account for the wonderful evidences of a great and continuous population. In these districts it is only necessary to go slowly over a ploughed field after a period of heavy rain to be fairly certain to pick up a flint knife, a beautifully chipped arrow-head, or an implement of less obvious purpose, generally described as a scraper. In this way, apart from any finds in barrows, large collections have been formed, and the best of them have gradually left private hands and reached permanent resting-places in the museums at York, Great Driffield,[A] Leeds, Malton, and Scarborough. When bronze-using man reached these parts, the population appears to have continued to be large, for their remains have been discovered all over the Wolds; and when the Prehistoric Iron Age in turn succeeded that period, we find from the burial mounds that there were men still living here. To those who have never taken any interest in the traces of Early Man in this country, this may appear a musty subject, but to me it is quite the reverse. The long lines of entrenchments, the round tumuli, and the prehistoric sites generally--omitting lake dwellings--are almost invariably to be found upon high and windswept tablelands, wild or only recently cultivated places, where the echoes have scarcely been disturbed since the long-forgotten ages, when a primitive tribe mourned the loss of a chieftain, or yelled defiance at their enemies from their double or triple lines of defence. In journeying in any direction through the Wolds it is impossible to forget the existence of Early Man, for on the sky-line just above the road will appear a row of two or three rounded projections from the regular line of turf or stubble. They are burial-mounds that the plough has never levelled--heaps of earth that have resisted the disintegrating action of weather and man for thousands of years. If such relics of the primitive inhabitants of this island fail to stir the imagination, then the mustiness must exist in the unresponsive mind rather than in the subject under discussion. In making an exploration of the Wolds a good starting-place is the old-fashioned town of Malton, whence railways radiate in five directions, including the line to Great Driffield, which takes advantage of the valley leading up to Wharram Percy, and there tunnels its way through the high ground.