STONEHENGE AND THE STARS 255 



which five planets were shown. Stonehenge repre- 

 sented the planet Saturn ; the two circles at Ave- 

 bury stood for the Sun and Moon, and they all 

 centred round that most marvellous and wholly 

 unexplained earthwork, Silbury Hill, which was 

 taken to mean the Earth. Dr. John Smith, who 

 published in 1770 a work called Choir-Gaur, 

 dealing with Stonehenge, which he calls " the 

 Grand Orrery of the Ancient Druids," gets nearer 

 to modern theories when he describes it as an 

 astronomical " Temple erected in the earliest 

 ages for observing the motions of the heavenly 

 bodies." Further, he goes on to say that the Stone, 

 at some little distance from the circle itself, which 

 is known as the " Friar's Heel," indicates the 

 " sun's greatest amplitude at the summer solstice." 

 This large stone is a point of importance in all 

 solar and stellar theories in connexion with Stone- 

 henge, and the guide who used, in my earlier days, 

 to show people over the place, always used to 

 point it out with the remark that the sun rose 

 over the Friar's Heel on Midsummer morning, 

 and shone straight over the Altar Stone, and be- 

 tween the pillars of the great central trilithon. As 

 a matter of fact this statement is correct, for 

 Professor Gowland says that 



" If on the morning of Midsummer Day we 

 stand in the middle of the horseshoe curve in 

 which the trilithons are arranged, a point once 

 marked by the aperture between the two piers 

 of the central and greatest of them, and look in 

 the direction of the " hele stone " [i.e., the Friar's 



