By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 59 
henge, those stones which we have been accustomed to look up to 
as of colossal proportions, now dwindle into comparative insignifi- 
cance, by the side of their gigantic brethren. For (to speak only 
of what I have myself seen and measured) while the statue of 
Remeses weighed 887 tons, and each of the great stones of Baalbeck 
weighed 900 tons, and measured 63 feet in length: the highest 
stone at Stonehenge is computed to measure under 25 feet, while 
the largest stone at Avebury is scarcely 20 feet in height, and its 
weight about 62 tons; and this is declared by Mr. Cunnington 
and announced by Mr. Long, (the very able author of Abury 
Illustrated) ! to be the most massive sarsen stone in Wiltshire.? 
Let me hasten to add that I do not say this in disparagement of 
our famous Wiltshire temples; “the first architectural witnesses 
of English religion,” as Dean Stanley calls them: * it would indeed 
ill become me, as Secretary of the Wiltshire Archzological Society 
to de so: and such indeed is very far from my thoughts. But to 
sum up the conclusions which may perhaps be drawn from the 
facts to which I have been directing attention; we may, I think, 
reasonably conjecture, that those who erected Avebury and Stone- 
henge, could have drawn the stones which compose them, by the 
united strength of numbers, without any very great mechanical 
knowledge: while in the words of Mr. Rawlinson,‘ “it is the most 
reasonable supposition that the cross stones at Stonehenge and the 
_ Cromlech stones, were placed in the positions where we now find 
; them by means of inclined planes afterwards cleared away.” 
3 But if it is here objected, that it is unsound to argue from the 
practice of those considerably advanced in scientific and mechanical 
} skill; and apply this argument to the practice of a nation, which 
4 shows no such tokens of enlightenment: I would submit in the 
f 

1 Wiltshire Magazine, vol. iv., p. 336. ‘‘ The specific gravity of Sarsen stone 
is about 2500 or 13 times greater than that of water. The weight per cubic 
foot is 154 lbs.” 
2A larger specimen stood in the same structure a few years since, but is 
now unhappily destroyed; the weight of which was not less than 90 tons,” 
[Iidem, p. 336. ] 
5 Lectures on the Jewish Church, p. 59. 
* Ancient Monarchies of the Hast, p. 500. 

