By Mrs. M. E. Cmmington. 1 7 



A small fragment oE a stone unlike anything else found in tlie 

 barrow was thrown out in a spadeful of soil from about the old 

 ground level in the north-eastern trench. The fragment measures 

 one and one-tenth of an inch by four-fifths ; the greatest thickness 

 being two-fifths. One surface is smooth, polished, and slightly 

 concave, whilst the others are rough and uneven. Mr. N. Story 

 Maskelyne, to whom it was submitted, kindly procured its mi- 

 croscopical examination by Mr. Fletcher, Keeper of the Mineral 

 Department of the British Museum, and by Mr. Prior, of that 

 department. 



Mr. Story Maskelyne writes as follows : — 



" Mr. Fletcher tells me that he has looked through the sections of many 

 rocks resembling it, and so far finds the nearest to it in a metamorphosed 

 basaltic rock from the neighbourhood of Penzance. Of course, as he observes, 

 there may be places in Devon and elsewhere where such a rock may be found. 

 It is clear that it is not a Wiltshire rock at all. A petrological account of it 

 as seen in the section describes it as consisting of a fibrous hornblende with 

 strings of opacite and a small amount of felspar. Opacite is a name given 

 to a substance occurring in rocks of probably variable composition, and so, 

 indefinite in character, and opaque under the microscope. Of course if 

 Professor Judd is right in imagining drift to have been in this part of Wilts 

 and near Stonehenge, the stone may have come from somewhere in company 

 with other drift stones. If that were so it is very singular that not a speck 

 of such material remained anywhere on the ground or in walls, and that they 

 only have been met with in Stonehenge and in sepulchral tumuli, and in 

 this case with a worked surface." 



As there were no signs of recent fracture and no other similar 

 stone could be found it is probable that this broken fragment 

 found its way alone and accidentally into the barrow. 



The Eev. E. H. Goddard has suggested that the form and 

 character of the fragment make it very probable that it is a chip 

 off the upper or under side of a hammer-axe. Mr. Goddard points 

 out that celts made of a somewhat similar stone have been found 

 elsewhere in Wilts, and that in the Stourhead Collection there are 

 five perforated axes or hammer axes from the barrows of South 

 Wilts all made of igneous and non-Wiltshire rocks, so that 

 it is quite likely that the builders of the barrow had im- 

 plements of this material. It seems likely that this piece of a 

 hammer-axe, if such it be, like other implements of the kind found 



VOL. XXXV. — NO. CVII. C 



