198 
world. He rejects also the theory of a place of popular 
assembly. The population on these downs, he says, could 
never have been greater, or so great, as that which now exists; 
how unlikely then that a Temple or a Meeting-place would be 
constructed, capable of holding 250,000 within the enclosure, 
and half a million standing or sitting on the mound. 
Ferguson believes Abury to be the burial place of those who 
fell in a great battle. He says that it is just such a monument 
as a victorious army of 10,000 men, with the assistance of their 
prisoners, could erect in a week with a few rollers and ropes. 
He suggests what battle it was, 7.e., the last and greatest battle 
fought by King Arthur against the Saxons at Badon Hill, 
A.D. 520.* 
The Rev. W. C. Lukis, the well-known writer on the 
megalithic remains of the Channel Islands, Brittany and Corn- 
wall, in a paper read before the Society of Antiquaries in 1882, 
rejects the serpent theories of Stukeley, but refrains from 
bringing forward any of his own. 
The Rey. A. C. Smith, the author of A Guide to the British 
and Roman Antiquities of the North Wiltshire Downs in a 
Hundred Square Miles round Abury, published in 1885, quotes 
the opinions of these writers to whom I have referred, and 
declares that he is not shaken by anything hitherto adduced 
against the theory that Abury was a Temple of the Ancient 
Britons. Then he proceeds to give a very careful account of 
the researches and discoveries made by the Rev. W. C. Lukis 
and himself, in 1881. 
The latest contribution that I have seen to the Archeology 
of Abury is a Public Lecture, given in the Ashmolean Museum, 
Oxford, on December 6th, 1888, by Mr A. J. Evans, and printed 
in the Archeological Review, Vol. II., pp. 312-330. Mr Evans is 
of opinion that Abury and similar megalithic circles are closely 
connected, directly or indirectly, with the burial of the dead 
and the religious rites which followed. He believes that each 
of the two concentric circles at Abury had central cists, which 
* Rude Stone Monuments. By James Ferguson, B.C.L., 1872, Chap. ii. 
—————- re a 
—E—— OO 
