4 The Eleventh General Meeting. 
year. Westbury and Hungerford would both afford good centres 
of districts unexplored by us, and there is much yet to be investi- 
gated in those places which we have visited more than once. I 
had hoped in this visit to have explored some of the pit holes 
supposed to be the remains of the villages of the aboriginal in- 
habitants: there are many of these on the hill sides between 
Pitton and Winterslow, and others at Tidpit near Martin, and near 
Hanley in the Chase, which, though in Dorsetshire, are within 
reach of your present centre. Then again there is the great work 
of coming to some more certain conclusion as to the origin and 
state of Stonehenge. It was suggested by Mr. Matcham that it 
would be feasible with proper notice to get together savans from 
different countries acquainted with that and similar monuments of 
antiquity, and that a Stonehenge Congress should be assembled, at 
which much might be done towards elucidating its history. I trust 
this suggestion will not be lost sight of, for it is peculiarly within 
the province of the Wiltshire Archeological Society to take the 
lead in such a scheme. At one time I had hoped to gain this for 
our present meeting, but the time was too short to do it effectually. 
A year’s notice would not more than suffice, as the Congress should 
be summoned through existing Archzological Societies in different 
parts of the world, and to give effect to the different papers and dis- 
cussions, some notice should be given to those who were requested 
to contribute to them. It was also suggested that the assembling 
of such a congress might well be commemorated by raising the 
trilithon that has fallen in the memory of man, and that we should 
obtain leave to search under the supposed altar stone in the hope 
of elucidating the date and the object for which the structure was 
raised. I at once applied as your President to Sir Edmund Autrobus 
for leave to carry out these proposals, if we found it possible at so 
short a notice to get the proposed Congress together, and I am 
convinced that Sir Edmund must have been as much suprised as 
myself, to find that his kind and courteous refusal has magnified 
him into the defender of our great national monument against the 
ruthless destruction of it contemplated by the Wiltshire Archzo- 
logists. We should indeed be unworthy of our name if we could 
