839 



To the Editor of the Wiltshire Magazine} 



West Hay, Wring ton, August 18th, 



Deab Mb. Smith, 



You will, I am sure, kindly help me in the public correction of an 

 error into which I have been drawn by assuming the accuracy of a report given 

 in one of the Wiltshire papers of a speech made by Mr. Matcham in reply to 

 Canon Jackson's paper on Stoneheoge, read at Marlborough, at the Society's 

 meeting, in 1859. That report states "That the Phoenicians having lead and 

 iron mines in Wales, it was by no means improbable they drew these stones 

 from different parts of the country as emblems of the places whence they derived 

 their wealth." Mr, Matcham writes to me in his kind and courteous way that 

 " such a notion never entered my head. I only expressed my opinion that 

 Phoenician architects were employed by the people who had determined on the 

 erection or enlargement of the temple — to transport the outer stones from the 

 site, and to erect them in the way they now appear, and I think this suggestion 

 susceptible of something very like proof" You would oblige me very much if 

 you would, at the meeting next week, and (if necessary) in the next number of 

 the Journal, give the correction of this error as wide a circulation as the error 

 itself. 



I sincerely hope that you will not separate next week until you have had a 

 thoroughly good discussion of the Stonehenge questions. If we cannot yet go 

 far in advance, we can at least get rid of some of the rubbish which has been 

 for so long a period accumulating about that place and its history. 



With Sir John Lubbock as President, you ought not to disperse without having 

 cleared the ground and opened a way to something more satisfactory than the 

 popular ©pinions of past years. 



Very sincerely yours, 



W. LONQ. 



' The following note was read by the Rev. A. C. Smith at the Annual Meeting 

 at Salisbury, on the 23rd August, and would rightly appear in the forthcoming 

 account of those proceedings ; but is printed here, in order that no time may 

 be lost in rectifying the mistake made, and also in order that the correction may 

 «ccur in the same volume which contains the mis-statement. [Ed.] 



