By William Long, Esq. 65 



tKan usual quantity) should have laid unmolested in a barrow where 

 there were a hundred rabbit holes. On removing the earth from over 

 the cist, we found a large piece of one of the blue stones of Stone- 

 henge, which Sowerby the naturalist calls a horn stone, which, with 

 the sarsen stone, is a very singular occurence, and decidedly proves 

 that the adjoining temple was erected previous to the tumulus. 

 Some persons acquainted with the soil in this part of Wiltshire, 

 might think the finding of sarsen stones no uncommon event, and 

 I should perhaps have thought the same, had these specimens 

 been rounded by attrition ; but the stones found within this barrow 

 are pieces chipped off, (I am sorry to say) like those now daily 

 knocked off" from the great fallen trilithon. With regard to the 

 blue stone, we are certain this species is not to be fomid in the 

 southern district of Wiltshire. In opening the fine bell-shaped 

 barrow N.E. of Stonehenge, we also found one or two pieces of 

 the chippings of these stones, as well as in the waggon tracks 

 round the area of the temple. These circumstances tend to give a 

 much higher era of antiquity to our celebrated building, than some 

 antiquaries would be willing to allow, and evidently prove that at 

 the period when the tumuli adjoining Stonehenge were raised, the 

 plain was covered with the chippings of the stones that had been 

 employed in the formation of the stone circle.^^ ^ 



Mr. Cunnington, F.G.S., has kindly furnished the writer -nath the 

 following remarks upon these findings of chippings in the neighbour- 

 ing barrows : " No doubt the stones were worked at or near the spot 

 .where they now stand, and the surface of the downs aroimd must 

 have been strewed with the chippings. ^ These in course of time 

 would sink through the turf and soil, till they reached the chalk 

 below; owing mainly to the action of the earth-worms, which are 

 continually throwing up the earth to the surface, and in a less de- 

 gree, to the growth of the ordinary vegetation. 



1 Ancient Wilts, i., p. 127. 

 *Note by Mr. Cunnington. — Mr. H. L. Long in his " Survey of the Early 

 Geography of Western Europe," (1859,) p. 109, mentions the fact that at a 

 newly-erected farm a little westward of Stonehenge, cultivation has levelled 

 two barrow-like mounds,which were in a great measure formed of the chip- 

 ings and fragments of the stones of Stonehenge. 

 VOL. lYI. NO. XLVI. V 



