By William Long, Esq. 73 



of the valley, and winding like a mighty stream towards the 

 soutli. 



" Three or four small lateral valley s^ containing a similar deposit, 

 and converging to the main valley, add to the impression that almost 

 involmitarily forces itself upon the mind, that it must be a stream of 

 rocks, e'en now flowing onward.' 



" In some places, they strew the ground so thickly, that across 

 miles of country, a person might almost leap from stone to stone, 

 without touching the ground on which they lie, and some of them 

 are four or five yards across. Sometimes the masses are formed of 

 unusually fine sand, and the result is a very dense hard rock. In 

 this variety are commonly found the remains of what appear to he 

 fucoids or sea weeds. They do not exhibit any very marked structure, 

 hut are certainly vegetable. With regard to the origin of the stones 

 composing the small circle and inner oval of Stonehenge our in- 

 formation is less definite. They differ entirely from the sarsens, 

 being all primary or igneous rocks. Professor Tennant, of King's 

 College, has favored me by making a fresh examination of the speci- 

 mens. With four exceptions, they are of syenite, composed of quartz, 

 felspar, and hornblende. One of the exceptions is silicious schist, 

 and the other three greenstone, containing small crystals of horn- 

 blende and iron pyrites, the latter partly decomposed, and passing 

 into oxide of iron. The altar-stone is a fine-grained micaceous sand- 

 stone. Professor Ramsay, of the Geological Survey, says : 'They are 

 certainly not drifted boulders, and do not resemble the igneous rocks 

 of Cham wood Forest ; and without asserting that they came from 

 Wales or Shropshire, I may state that they are of the same nature 

 as the igneous rocks of part of the Lower Silurian region of North 

 Pembrokeshire and of Caernarvonshire. 



" Professor Tennant says that Charnwood Forest contains several 

 kinds of greenstones and syenite, but that he never saw any of them 

 like the stones of Stonehenge. They bear, however, he thinks, a 

 strong resemblance to those of the Channel Islands, and it has always 

 appeared to him that they were obtained from that source. 



' These stones are now rapidly disappearing ; they are used for building purposes. 



