4 The Twenty-third General Meeting. 
made to Mr.. Long to try and induce that gentleman to do for 
Stonehenge what he had so admirably done for Avebury. Mr. 
Long, however, with a generous diffidence which all will appreciate, 
declined, during Dr. Thurnam’s lifetime, to engage in a work which 
he modestly thought that able antiquary would better carry out, 
and it was not until after the lamented death of Dr. Thurnam, that 
Mr. Long would suffer himself to be persuaded to take Stonehenge 
in hand. How he has succeeded, how he has made copious use (as 
he himself tells us in the outset of his work) of Dr. Thurnam’s 
MSS., which were kindly placed at his disposal by Mrs. Thurnam, 
how he arranged his materials, collected the scattered notices he has 
culled from various sources, brought them all within a narrow com- 
pass, and explained everything in detail, assisting the letterpress 
with copious illustrations (all of which he has most generously pre- 
sented to the Society), you can all judge for yourselves. Enough 
for the Committee to state that since the publication of its magnum 
opus, to wit Canon Jackson’s Aubrey, the Society’s press has neither 
been engaged with more valuable material, nor has it published 
anything of which it is more proud: and when Mr. Long modestly 
suggested to the Editor of the Magazine that there should be 
printed on the cover of the Stonehenge number a repudiation of all 
responsibility on the part of the Society for the opinions contained 
therein, your Editor felt no hesitation in accepting on the part of 
the Society any share of responsibility, in hopes that by so doing 
the Society might at the same time derive some portion of the credit 
which such a work cannot fail to bring to all who have had any part 
in it. So far for the literary work of the Society to the present 
moment, though it should be added that No. 48, concluding volume 
XVi., is in progress, and will, it is hoped, be in the hands of Members 
in the course of the autumn ; and with that number will be published 
an index to the last eight volumes (Canon Jackson having already 
published an index to the first eight, of which he was Editor) ; and 
for this last index we shall be indebted to the diligence of one of our 
local Secretaries, the Rev. W. C. Plenderleath, Rector of Cherhill, 
who has already prepared, so far as he can prepare, an index of a 
work which is not yet quite completed. 
