172 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
venter of the loop; five zigzag lines and two parallel lines, on each of which, and 
pointing toward each other, is a series of cones ornamented by lines radiating from 
the apex, crossed by others parallel to the base—this design has been produced by 
scraping, and I propose to call it the Patella ornament, as it strikingly resembles 
the large species of that shell so common on owr coasts, and which shell Mr. Conwell 
discovered in numbers in some of the cists, in connection with fragments of pottery 
and human bones; a semicircle with three or four straight lines proceeding from it, 
but not touching it; a dot with several lines radiating from it; combinations of 
short straight lines arranged either at right angles to or sloping from a central line; 
an cA-shaped curve, each loop inclosing concentric cireles; and a vast number of 
other combinations of the circle, spiral, line, and dot, which can not be described in 
writing. 
Some of the ancient ‘*Turf-Monuments” of England are to be classed 
as petroglyphs. The following extracts from the work of Rev. W. A. 
Plenderleath ()) give sufficient information on these curious pictures: 
Although all the White Horses, except one, are in Wiltshire, that one exception 
is the great sire and prototype of them all, which is at Uffington, just 24 miles out- 
side the Wiltshire boundary and within that of Berkshire. * * * The one medi- 
zeval document in which the White Horse is mentioned is a cartulary of the Abbey - 
of Abingdon, which must have been written either in the reign of Henry II or soon 
after, and which runs as follows: *‘ It was then customary amongst the English that 
any monks who wished might receive money or landed estates and both use and de- 
volve them according to their pleasure. Hence two monks of the monastery at 
Abingdon, named Leofrie and Godric Cild, appear to have obtained by inheritance 
manors situated upon the banks of the Thames; one of them, Godric, becoming pos- 
sessed of Spersholt, near the place commonly known as the White Horse Hill, and the 
other that of Whitchurch, during the time that Aldhelm was abbot of this place.” 
This Aldhelm appears to have been abbot from 1072 to 1084, and from the terms in 
which the White Horse Hill is mentioned the name was evidently an old one at that 
time. 
Now it was only two hundred years before this time, viz, in 871, that a very 
famous victory had been gained by King Alfred over the Danes close to this very 
spot. ‘‘Four days after the battle of Reading,” says Asser, ‘‘ King £thelred, and 
Alfred, his brother, fought against the whole army of the pagans at Ashdown. ~ ~ ~ 
And the flower of the pagan youths were there slain, so that neither before nor since 
was ever such destruction known since the Saxons first gained Britain by their arms.” 
And it was in memory of this victory that, we are informed by local tradition, Alfred 
caused his men, the day after the battle, to cut out the White Horse, the standard 
of Hengist, on the hillside just under the castle. The name Hengist, or Hengst, 
itself means Stone Horse in the ancient language of the Saxons, and Bishop Nichol- 
son, in his ** English Atlas,” goes so far as to suppose the names of Hengist and 
Horsa to have been not proper at all, but simply emblematical. 
The Uffington horse measures 355 feet from the nose to the tail and 120 feet from 
the ear to the hoof. It faces to sinister, as do also those depicted upon all British 
coins. The slope of the portion of the hill upon which it is cut is 39, but the 
declivity is very considerably greater beneath the figures. The exposure is south- 
west. 
The author then describes the White Horse on Bratton Hill, near 
Westbury, Wilts, now obliterated, the dimensions of which were, ex- 
treme length, 100 feet; height, nearly the same; from toe to chest, 54 
feet, and gives accounts of several other White Horses, the antiquity 
