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“bluestones” now remaining at Stonehenge probably represent 
only the hardest and most durable of the materials employed, 
many stones of soft and fissile character having disappeared entirely, 
owing to the action of the weather and the assaults of relic-mongers, 
during the long period of the existence of the monument. 
The older authors like Conybeare have insisted that the nature 
of the stones is not inconsistent with the tradition that the circle 
was transported by a tribe from Ireland from the neighbourhood 
of Kildare ? 
Professor John Phillips suggested Wales, Cornwall, and Dartmoor 
as possible localities from which the “ bluestones” of Stonehenge 
may have been brought. 
The late Sir Andrew Ramsay wrote as follows :—the “bluestones ” 
do not resemble the igneous rocks of Charnwood 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 
Lower Silurian region of North Pembrokeshire, of Caernarvonshire, 
and of the Llandeilo flag district of Montgomeryshire, etc., west of 
the Stiper Stones.”! Professor Maskelyne was inclined to regard 
North Wales or Cumberland as the districts from which the stones 
might have been derived.2 Mr. Teall points out that diabases of 
the Stonehenge type are widely distributed in the South-West of 
England, and that all the rocks of which he had seen fragments 
from the soil “belong to types which are undoubtedly represented 
in the West of England.” ® 
But all attempts to suggest a locality in which all the “blue- 
sto nes” might have been found by a primitive tribe and transported 
y them to Salisbury Plain are confronted with one grave difficulty. 
§ it conceivable that these skilful builders would have transported 

2 Wilts Arch. Mag., xvii. (1877), 157. 
3 Wilts Arch. Mag., xxvii. (1894), 67. 
