BRIDGE AT WALTHAM ABBEY ATTRIBUTED TO HAROLD
A bridge belonging to the same school is to be found at Monzie, near Crieff, in Perthshire; there are several in North Wales, the best example being Pandy Old Bridge at Bettws-y-Coed; and a good English specimen, quite as entertaining as Harold’s Bridge at Waltham, should be noted at Hayfield. Nothing can be simpler than this use of a single rough ring of voussoirs; and it justifies the inference that Roman pontists were niggardly in Britain, since they stereotyped a narrow bridge without parapets, and erected no tremendous aqueduct and no bridge of enduring fame, such as we find elsewhere in Europe. If Rome had foreseen the future history of Britain, and had given way to jealousy, she could not have been more parsimonious in her British bridge-building.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] The orang in the Eastern islands, for example, and the chimpanzee in Africa, build platforms on which they sleep.
[35] White of Selborne notes this fact. And Darwin notes two others of equal interest. He says: “The orang is known to cover itself at night with the leaves of the Pandanus; and Brehm states that one of his baboons used to protect itself from the heat of the sun by throwing a straw mat over its head. In these several habits we probably see the first steps towards some of the simpler arts, such as rude architecture and dress, as they arose among the early progenitors of man.” Darwin refers to architecture as well as dress because of an earlier sentence on the platforms built by anthropomorphous apes.
[36] But for this habit we should be less horrified by the acts of German “culture” in a time of war. I add this note to my proofs, September 26, 1914.
[37] Better in many respects, but not in all; for as Darwin points out, it was the self-condoning mind of man, not the instinct of any brute beast, that came to use infanticide as a custom. “The instincts of the lower animals are never so perverted as to lead them regularly to destroy their own offspring.” Only arguments can choose and approve unnatural habits.
[38] “Daily Telegraph,” September 8, 1913, p. 5.
[39] “A Book of North Wales,” by S. Baring-Gould, pp. 2-3.