SOME NOTES ON ARBOR LOW, 10! 
Mr. James Ferguson, the well-known architectural writer, pub- 
lished, in 1872, his great work on “ Rude Stone Monuments,” 
which has revolutionised the careless theories into which so many 
antiquaries had heedlessly drifted, and an important section of 
the book is devoted to Arbor Low and remains ofa like character 
in Derbyshire. * 
Mr. Ferguson’s arguments as to the historic character and com- 
paratively late date of such monuments have remained up to the 
present time unanswered, and no serious attempt has been made 
to refute them. True, a long series of papers in supposed reply, 
from the pen of Mr. Goss, on the old Druidical lines, were 
printed in the Rediguary,+ but no one worthy of the name of 
antiquary, or possessed of any power of weighing evidence, could 
regard these papers as any serious contribution to the question. 
They were entitled “ Arbor Low,” but not one-hundredth part of 
their contents had any connection with this erection. 
At the meeting of the British Association at Sheffield, in 1879, 
Sir John Lubbock, the great author of “ Prehistoric Man” and 
other kindred works, was appropriately chosen to read a paper on 
Arbor Low upon the spot itself. A copy of this paper has been 
recently kindly forwarded to me by the author.t His paper was 
characterised by that modesty which is not uncommon in really 
able men, and has a value of its own, notwithstanding the vague- 
ness of its conclusions. From it I take the following extracts :— 
“There can be no doubt that Gib Hill and the tumulus here 
were places of burial, but the original purpose of the circle is not 
so obvious Mr. Bateman called it a temple, but the temple is 
the house of the Deity, and even when perfect this can scarcely 
have been regarded as a house. Still, just as the tomb was the 
house of the dead, sometimes a copy of the dwelling, nay, in some 
cases, the very dwelling itself of the deceased, so by an obvious 
chain of ideas the tomb developed into the temple. Now, we 
* Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries; Their Age and Uses (John 
Murray, 1873). 
+ The Reliquary, Vols. xvii., xviii., and xix. 
+ I find that this paper has been reprinted in the Re/?guary, Vol. xx., pp 81-85. 
