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147 
Stonehenge: the Petvology of its Stones. 
By Nevit Story Masxetyng, M.A., F.R.S. 
fHILE much ingenious speculation has been expended on the 
purpose and the date of the men who reared Stonehenge, 
speculation which is not likely ever to find a final resting-place, one 
path at least has been left untrodden, the pursuit of which might 
lead to our knowing something about the nature and extent of the 
regions included within the enterprises of these ancient people; and 
which would still be worth following up, even if the purpose of 
Stonehenge is to continue enshrouded in pre-historic mists. This 
pathway is that of an exhaustive petrological enquiry into the 
localities from which it was possible for the different stones to have 
been brought together previously to their being reared in their places 
at Stonehenge. These stones indeed are capable of speaking in a 
language that has no ambiguity if we know how to interpret it; 
while in the profound silence of history they seem to offer a solitary 
clue to the area of activity, and perhaps, by implication, to the 
motives of action influencing the men who brought them to the 
plain of Salisbury. 
One of the reasons why this path has not been systematically 
followed out has no doubt been that exact petrology is a very modern 
science, and one that has been pursued by very few Englishmen ; 
and, furthermore, if there had been a larger company of English 
petrologists, it is unfortunately true that at this time there nowhere 
exists the material to aid their investigation of such a problem, in the 
form of an even approximately complete public collection of the rocks 
of Great Britain: and the result of so singular a blank in our public 
collections is to preclude the enquirer from instituting the com- 
parisons that would be necessary in order to establish the identity 
of the stones of Stonehenge with those of the different localities 
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