The President’s Address. 9 
the sarsen stones which cover the surface of the Wiltshire downs. 
© As the chalky matter of the earth hardened at creation,’ he says, 
‘it spewed out the most solid body of the stones of greater specific 
gravity than itself, and, assisted by the centrifuge power owing to 
the rotation of the earth upon its axis, threw them upon its surface, 
where they now lie. This,’ he adds, ‘is my opinion concerning 
this appearance, which I often attentively considered.’ We are not 
without our Stukeleys at the present time, when the progress of 
science has lessened the excuse for us, and we ought, therefore, to 
be lenient to our predecessors. ‘Two things we ought to learn 
from history,’ says Dr. Arnold in his lectures on modern history 
published in 1841, ‘one, that we are not ourselves superior to our 
fathers; another, that we are shamefully and monstrously inferior 
to them if we do not advance beyond them.’ And this, if it is not 
borne out by an extended view of human nature, or by the light of 
recent discovery, is nevertheless sufficiently true to prevent our 
exulting over our ancestors in consequence of our superior knowledge, 
It would be a profitless task tc recount the opinions of our prede- 
cessors if we did not find fault with their methods and their con- 
clusions; but, in doing so, we must not be taken to condemn them 
personally because they do not represent the uppermost rungs of 
the ladder that we are climbing. Sir Richard Colt Hoare was the 
first to apply himself to the study of our Wiltshire tumuli by the 
only satisfactory method, viz., by excavation in them. Taking for 
his motto, “We speak from facts, not theory,’ he opened three 
hundred and seventy-nine barrows, and recorded their contents in 
two folio volumes, with ample illustrations. He differentiated the 
long from the round barrows, and showed that the former contained 
no metal implements, and none but the rudest kinds of pottery, and 
that they were probably the earliest, but he did not thoroughly 
establish a Stone Age, and it is a question whether those most 
valuable items of evidence, the flint flake and the scraper, did not 
entirely escape his notice. When we consider the time that he 
devoted to his excavations, and the number of them that must have 
passed under his eyes, we may well ask what evidence we ourselves 
are failing to notice, through ignorance of its bearing upon our 
