60 On the Method of Moving Colossal Stones. 
first place, that the stones of Avebury and Stonehenge must have 
been transported and erected by some means, and what more pro- 
bable method can be shown? And in the next place I am not 
attributing to our British architects anything like the skill of their 
Assyrian and Egyptian contemporaries, who were confessedly so 
far their superiors in civilization, science and art: but I do hold, 
that if those advanced nations of antiquity could transport their 
colossi and erect their megalithic structures (many of which mono- 
liths weighed ten times more than our largest Wiltshire stones) 
by the sheer force of numbers, aided only by such simple mechanical 
contrivances, as the roller, the lever, and the wedge: it seems 
likely that the founders of our Wiltshire temples would, with an 
unlimited command of human strength, even without the assistance 
of any mechanical knowledge, if we should deny them this, be able 
to effect on a comparatively small scale what their more advanced 
contemporaries did to such an astonishing extent. And therefore 
I would claim for the early inhabitants of our downs who built 
Stonehenge and Avebury, the same motto which the Wiltshire 
Archeological Society of this day has adopted for its badge, 
<‘ Multorum manibus grande levatur onus.” 
Atrrep CHaARLEs SMITH. 
Yatesbury Rectory, Calne, 
July, 1865, 
