Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, and Articles. 355 
perhaps the long barrows, are of a date long subsequent to the origina] 
Stonehenge. This was a Temple of the Sun, built by a people who knew 
that the year consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days. They offered 
sacrifice before each of the stones of the outer circle, successively, com- 
pleting the circle each month of thirty days—the five odd days having 
each of them a trilithon dedicated to it. The four principal days of the 
year would be the longest and shortest and the days of the vernal and 
autumnal equinoxes—when the principal sun festivals would take place. 
The longest and shortest days could be fixed by the rising and the setting 
of the sun—observed in connection with the Hele Stone—but the equinoxes 
could not. They must be fixed by observation of the stars—and the two 
mounds and two stones inside the earth circle were for this purpose—that 
the transits of the stars, at the moment of sunrise might be observed 
over them. ‘If we could satisfy ourselves as to what those four stars 
were and what were the stations in the temple from which they were 
observed, then since their right ascensions must at this time have coincided 
with the angles from the East made by those stones and mounds, we 
should be able, knowing what those angles are now and must then have 
been, to say decidedly what the right ascensions of these stars were, 
when the stones and mounds were placed in position, and from these 
data to calculate exactly the date of that event.” To the objection that 
the number of the stars are innumerable from which to make his selection 
he answers that practically there are only about twelve stars answering 
the requirements of the theory from which the four can beselected. The 
author selects his four stars, and by calculating the difference between 
their present right ascension and that which must have been theirs when 
they fitted into his plan, he obtains as the probable result the date of 
1000 B.C. Again, he regards the line of picked holes across the corner 
of the prostrate Slaughter Stone as intentionally made to mark the spot 
where a staff was set up in a line between the Hele Stone and the Altar 
Stone for the observation of the Midsummer sunrise. This was the 
original use of the structure, as built by the Phcnicians, B.C. 1000. 
About B.C. 400 the Greeks supplanted the Phcenicians in their trade with 
Britain. Owing to the alteration in the position of the stars in the 
intervening six hundred years, Stonehenge no longer answered its original 
purpose. It was therefore re-formed by the Greeks, and the inner 
horseshoe of blue stones, numbering nineteen, was added to represent the 
Metonic Cycle. 
The Phoenicians were the only people who possessed sufficient science 
to erect suchastructure. The trilithon is connected with the Phoenicians. 
They traded with Britain and would want such u temple at this place— 
because the Britons must have brought the tin along the coast in coracles 
to Poole or Christchurch, whence it was shipped by the Phoenicians. 
Such is the author’s theory as set forth in this pamphlet, which contains 
the substance—with the exception of some alterations in the calculations 
—of the paper read at the Amesbury Meeting, 1899. 
Setting aside the astronomical calculations, is it conceivable that 
Phoenicians and Greeks should have erected and used for seven hundred 
VOL. XXX.—NO. XCII. 24 
