272 THOUGHTS IN A GRAVEL-PIT. [xi. 



you see these temples in their true grandeur. You 

 have all heard of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. 

 Some of you may have heard of the great Druid 

 temple at Abury in Wilts, which, were it not all but 

 destroyed, would be even grander than Stonehenge. 

 These are made of this same sugar-sandstone. 



But where did the sandstone come from ? You may 

 say, it "grew " of itself in our sands and gravels ; but 

 it certainly did not " grow " on the top of a bare chalk 

 down. The Druids must have brought the stones 

 thither, then, from neighbouring gravel-pits. They 

 brought them, no doubt : but not from gravel-pits. 

 The stones are found loose on the downs on the top of 

 the bare chalk, in places where they plainly have not 

 been put by man. 



For instance, near Marlborough is a long valley in 

 the chalk, which, for perhaps half a mile, is full of 

 huge blocks of this sandstone, lying about on the turf. 

 The " gray wethers " the shepherds call them. One 

 look at them would show you that no man's hand had 

 put them there. They look like a river of stone, if I 

 may so speak; as if some mighty flood had rolled 

 them along down the valley, and there left them behind 

 as it sunk. 



Now, whence did they come ? 



Many answers have been given to that question. 

 It was supposed by many learned men that they had 

 been brought from the sandstone mountains of Wales, 

 like the rolled pebbles of which I spoke just now. 

 But the answer to that was, that these great stones 

 are not rolled : they are all squarish, more or less ; 

 their edges are often sharp and fresh, instead of being 

 polished almost into balls, as they would have been in 



