By Nevil Story Maskelyne, M.A., PRS. 149 
stones in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain ; * 
considering them to resemble in feature rocks with which he was 
familiar in the old geological formations of North Wales. 
The different views of these geologists will be commented on 
further on; but it became evident, at once, that if any fresh light 
was to be thrown on the subject the first requisite for the investiga- 
tion was authentic material collected on the spot. 
I was indebted to Mr. Cunnington for the loan of several small 
fragments from, or picked up close to, particular stones. One of these 
was a granite, and, had it been an authentic specimen from any 
part of Stonehenge or the immediate environs, it would have been 
a most valuable clue to the history of its companion stones. Un- 
fortunately it proved not to be so, although it bore the label “ No. 
27 Hoare:” and it had to be set aside as a link in the chain of 
evidence. An attempt at the verification of the other stones in this 
collection which I took to Salisbury for this purpose, further proved 
so uncertain, that, while retaining them for general comparison, f 
found it indispénsible for the purposes of a scientific investigation 
to study each stone carefully on the spot, and to detach from several 
of them small fragments for microscopic investigation : a process that 
was performed with care, a small splinter being struck off by hands 
not entirely unskilled in the use of a hammer, generally from a part 
of the stone where some ruthless despoiler had previously detached; 
not the smallest bits of material that would serve a scientific ais 
but large masses of the stone. 
If one is compelled to deplore the act of the local farmer or wall- 
builder, who, in any one of the past twenty centuries may in his 
need have broken off and carried into some useful purpose the 
venerable sarsen from Avebury or Stonehenge, or any of the smaller 
and more portable stones of the latter monument, to him a stone 
and nothing more; it is only with indignation and contempt that 
one can speak of the person—certainly not to be called an archzolo- 
gist—who, in a mere spirit of relic-hunting, or perhaps of wanton 
1 Geology of parts of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, 1858, pp. 42, 44. 
