228 Stonehenge and/ its Barrows. 



if not sepulchral, were intended to perpetuate the final triumph of 

 the Southern Britons, and the limitation of the Belgic dominion. 

 The boundaries of which I am now speaking, are for the 

 most part extant on the steeper and northern sides of hills, the foss, 

 or excavation, lying on the North, because people, pressing forward 

 from the south, were opposing the resistance of a northern adversary/' 



The Bustard. 

 {Fage 140.; 

 The re-appearance of several bustards in Wiltshire in the winter of 

 1871, when the two, wbich, as stuffed specimens, are to be seen in the 

 Salisbury Museum, were killed, would seem to indicate that if this 

 bird had a chance of living a quiet life on the downs, it would 

 again be found occupying its former haunts. The rapid conversion 

 of the downs into corn and root-producing land would, however, 

 effectually prevent any re-settlement of this bird near Stonehenge, 

 even if it could ensure an unmolested existence. 



The Ossuary Theory. 

 (Fage 152.; 



Dr. Thurnam did not think that the provisional interment of 

 bodies during the formation of the mound which was to be their 

 ultimate destination would satisfactorily account for the remarkable 

 appearance presented by so many of these bodies when discovered 

 in the long barrows. He says " It is highly probable that, during 

 the time the large and honorary grave-mound was in process of 

 formation, the bodies of the dead and of those slaughtered in their 

 honour were deposited in some temporary grave, and subsequently 

 disinterred for final interment in the complete, or nearly complete, 

 long barrow. I am, however, satisfied, by repeated and minute ex- 

 aminations of the bones, that the very peculiar appearances which 

 they present cannot be entirely explained in this way; but that they 

 are due to the manner in which those who were sacrificed in the 

 course of the funeral ceremonies were slaughtered, and who seem to 

 have been literally * brained ■* by the blows of a club or stone axe." 

 " Archaeologia," xlii,, p. 191, 



