| By Professor T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., ¥.G.8., $e. 189 
sloping and undulating top, which has been smoothed by probably 
modern wear before its enclosure. The sides are pitted or dimpled 
by old weathering, and one side is somewhat furrowed, as it were, 
by trickling water. An oblique oval spot on one side (possibly 
marking the spot where a fossil stem was once imbedded) is repeated, 
of a larger size, on the opposite face. The stone is cracked obliquely. 
An incised inscription informs us that it was “ Erected A.D. 1850. 
William Pamphilon, Mayor”; and the following, in metal letters— 
Eadward, 901; Adelstan, 924; Eadmund, 943; Eadred, 946 ; 
Eadwig, 955; Eadward, 975; and Aidelred, 978, refer to Saxon 
Kings and the tradition of Kingston having been the place, and 
“this stone the seat of their coronation. [Edgar, 958, has been 
omitted, having been crowned at Bath]. 
Looking at the Greywethers near Clatford we are impressed with 
the idea, not only that the old sand-beds once stretched across where 
our country now stands, and have since been worn away or denuded,' 
but that they must have had far more extensive concretions in one 
part than another, and that above where the larger numbers of 
blocks now lie, there the hardened patches were strongest, thickest, 
and most continuous: and if some be more conglomeratic than others 
they were formed where the flint pebbles most congregated as 
shingle on the old sea-bed. 
The streaming of the stones along the valleys,’ and their unequal 
distribution along their sides, suggest that the currents and tides 
which wore away the old Tertiary sand-beds had some influence, 
aided by prevalent winds, storms, and perhaps by floating ice of a 
frigid climate, in shifting the blocks themselves, and leaving them 
more in the hollows than on the hills. Such a wonderful field for 
study and contemplation as these Valleys of Stones should certainly 
be preserved, by parking off some good area of the Greywethers as 
EE <<< 
a place of National Interest. 
q 1 First recognized, before 1810, by William Smith (‘‘the father of English 
geology”), according to Mr. W. Cunnington, F.G.S.; Wilts Mag., vol. iv., 
. 334. Mr. Cunnington, F.S.A., the fellow-worker with Sir Richard Colt 
oare, was a friend of W. Smith, and has left a memorandum in his MSS. to 
the above effect. 
_ 2 So well described by Mr. W. Cunnington in the “ Devizes Gazette” of June, 
1852, and the Wilts May., vol. iv., 1858, p. 334 (as quoted by Mr. W. Long). 
