110 



ioto foere tfjese cStoue0 koitjit anb set ujj ? 



gO the visitor of the ruins of Stoneheuge who is aware that the 

 stones composing it have been brought from a distance^ three 

 interesting questions naturally suggest themselves J 1, How were the 

 stones brought here ? 2, How were they shaped and prepared with 

 their mortises and tenons ? 3, How were they raised into their up- 

 right, and transverse positions ? 



Let us see whence and how they can have been brought here be- 

 fore the use of metalj aqd the means and appliances with which man 

 in more recent times has been so fully supplied. Having selected a 

 block of proper dimensions from the neighbourhood of Marlborough,^ 

 it would then be the work of the party to be employed in its removal 

 to cut down with their flint or horn axes/ poles sufilciently strong 

 and long to serve as levers; then to provide themselves with wooden 

 wedges ; and lastly to cut trees, of proper size, into proper lengths, 

 for rollers upon which the stone should run.^ 



Having raised their stone upon the rollers, they would, with their 



1 " Many of them [the sarsen, or as he calls them, sarsdon, stones] are mighty 

 great ones, and particularly those in Overton Wood. Of these kind of stones 

 are framed the two stupendous antic^uities of Anbury and Stone-heng." — 

 Aubrey's Nat. Hist, of Wilts (Britton's edition, p. 44). 



Dr. Chailtton, too, believed that the Stonehenge stones came " from the fields 

 adjoining Aibury or Kockly," p. 44. 



- Mr. E. T. Stevens, in his " Flint Chips," at page 68, gives us an interesting 

 account of the modern use of stone tools. " Many persons," he says, " are 

 loth to believe that rude stone hatchets have been used for cutting down trees, 

 and still less that planks and boats can have been made with similar tools." 

 He goes on "to cite some of the uses to which tools of stone, bone, horn and 



shell have been api)lied in modern times The axe used formerly 



by the natives of Vancouver's Island in felling the largest tree, which they did 

 without the use of fire, was made of elk-horn, and was shaped like a chisel. 

 The natives held it as we use the chisel, and struck the handle with a stone 

 not unlike a dumb-bell, and weighing about two pounds." 



^ Strabo, Geogr., iv., p. 280, says: " The Forests (of the Britons) are their 

 towns; for they fence in a spacious circuit with felled trees, and build them- 

 selves huts there, and stables for their cattle, (which they occupy) for no long 

 time." 



