By Professor T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., P.G8., Fc. 148 
is generally referred to the Woolwich-and-Reading beds, and does 
not appear to occur westward of Little Bedwin. There the 
ground is strewed with blocks of Sarsen stone; not the ordinary 
saccharoidal Greywether sandstone occurring on the Downs, but the 
harder, finer-grained variety, of which the blocks in the Vale of 
-Pewsey also consist.” The blocks are irregular in form, rounded 
and smoothed as if by water, and often pitted on both upper and 
under surface, with small deep holes, caused by the decay apparently 
of stem-like objects about the size of a large straw. These were 
determined to be of vegetable origin and rootlets, but nothing 
further. Fragments of coniferous wood, he adds, have been found 
in the Sarsens. 
The frequent occurrence of the rootlet-pipes wag noticed in my 
own papers in the Geol. Mag., Dec. 2, vol. 11., 1875, p. 588; zzd., 
vol, iii, 1876, p. 523; Transact. Newbury, District Field Club, 
vol. ii, 1878, p. 248; and Proceed. Geol. Assoc., vol. vi., 1881, 
p- 441. Camberley (near Frimley), Sandhurst, Long Lane (north 
of Newbury), Marlborough Downs, and Avebury, were mentioned 
particularly as localities. There are numerous examples in Mr. Nevil 
Story Maskelyne’s great collection at Basset-Down House, mentioned 
above at p. 188; and some in Mr. W. Cunnington’s collection. In 
1885 Col. C. Cooper King, F.G.S., noticed and sketched (Fig. 2) 
a very definite root-mark, somewhat different from the usual vertical 
straw-like irregularly parallel stems and rootlets (Fig. 3), at Abury ; 
and Mr. W. Carruthers, F.R.S., gave the result of his careful ex- 
amination of both this drawing and some of Mr. Codrington’s 
specimens, in the Geol. Mag., Dec. 3, vol. ii., 1885, pp. 8361—2. 
Referring to the latter, he writes: “ These vegetable remains are 
certainly roots. The method of branching shown in some of the 
specimens, and shown still better in a pencil-sketch by Major [now 
Col.] C. C. King, from a Sarsen which has been weathered in a 
wall at Abury, leave no doubt as to this. The rootlets leave the 
main root in every direction at right angles, The roots are in their 
original position. The soft sand, now indurated by siliceous cement, 
has been the soil on which the plants grew. An examination of the 
preparations show the main stem to have been composed of a small 
