STONEHENGE AND THE STARS 251 



foreman mason was able to produce with these 

 hammers an exactly similar kind of tooling on a 

 piece of sarsen whereas he was quite unable to 

 produce a similar appearance on the same stone 

 by the use of any of his own mason's tools. There 

 can be little doubt that Professor Gowland is 

 perfectly correct in assigning the rough hammers 

 and mauls which he discovered to the neolithic 

 or later stone period. Their roughness of con- 

 struction is no argument to the contrary, for it is 

 quite clear that early man had sense enough not 

 to make a razor for the purpose of cutting a 



tranite block, and that he reserved his highly 

 nished and polished implements for better pur- 

 poses than that of tooling great blocks of sarsen, 

 a task which could be perfectly well carried out 

 by less carefully modelled and finished imple- 

 ments. 



There is one further point connected with the 

 period of construction of Stonehenge which must 

 not be omitted. The eagle eye of Professor Gow- 

 land detected a small patch of green incrustation 

 upon the base of one of the tooled slabs ; and a 

 portion of this having been analysed, it was proved 

 that the incrustation was carbonate of copper and 

 that it could only have been produced by pro- 

 longed contact with a small lump of copper or 

 bronze, or other alloy of copper or with some small 

 ornament made of a substance of this nature. A 

 prolonged search was made for any remains of 

 this object, but without success, though Professor 

 Gowland is quite sure that nothing which was 

 larger than one-eighth inch could possibly have 



