368 



NAl^URE 



[February 20, 1908 



visible if the pseudopodia were withdrawn. Perhaps some 

 reader of Nature who has studied these protozoa may be 

 able to tell me whether these strise are- commonly met 

 with (in which case lack of power of observation has 

 criused me previously to overlook them), or whether they 

 niav be pathological, resulting from some debility in the 

 iirganism. Certainly the Amoeba; in which I noticed the 

 siriated protoplasm seemed to be as lively as any without 

 ii. Like all those whose business it is to teach elementary 

 biology, I have examined hundreds of Amoeba;, but to-day 

 for the first time I saw the condition described. No 

 iixt-book in my pos.sossion refers to or figures it. I shall 

 bf happy to send a drawing to anyone who may wish. 

 Klon College, February 12. ' M. D. Hill. 



An Alleged Originator of the Theory of Atoms. 



Mociius OF SmoN, the alleged precursor of Demokritus, 

 is not so unknown lo historians of science as Prof. .See 

 seems to think (February 13, p. 345), nor is Strabo the 

 only ancient writer who alludes to him ; see, for instance, 

 Jos'cphus, ".Antiquities," i., 3, 9. But nobody takes him 

 seriously. The book of Mochus is one of the numerous 

 literarv forgeries which appeared in Alexandrian times. 

 So far as I can find, it is not mentioned by any of the 

 doxographic writers, so it is probably not much older than 

 the t'ime of Posidonius. J. L. E. Drever. 



.Armagh Observalorv. 



.YOT£S OS AKCIENT BRITISH MONUMENTS.' 

 V. — Avenues {continued). 



SO far I have not referred to the avenues at Shap. 

 Mr. Lewis, in a memoir " on the past and pre- 

 sent condition of certain rude stone monuments in 

 Westmorland,"- ^ives extracts from several authori- 

 ties showing that in the long past these avenues were 

 not inferior to any in Britain. 



Thus Camden ' (middle of the sixteenth century) 

 writes : — " Several huge stones of a pyramidal form, 

 some of them 9 feet high and 4 feet thicl<, standing 

 in a row for near a iliile, at an equal distance, which 

 seem to have been erected in iiiemory of some trans- 

 action there which by length of time is lost." Dr. 

 Stukeley, writing about the middle of the last century, 

 says : — " At the south side of the town of Shap we 

 saw the beginning of a great Celtic avenue on a green 

 common ; this avenue is 70 feet broad, composed of 

 very large stones set at equal intervals ; it seems to 

 be closed at this end, -which is on an eminence and 

 near a long flatfish barrow with stone works upon 

 it, hence it proceeds northward to the town, which 

 intercepts the continuation of it and was the occasion 

 of its ruin, for many of the stones are put under the 

 foundations of walls and houses, being pushed by 

 machines they call a 'betty,' or blown up with gun- 

 powder ; . . . houses and fields lie across the track of 

 this avenue, and some of the houses lie in the enclo- 

 sure ; it ascends a hill, crosses the common road to 

 Penrith, and so goes into the cornfields on the other 

 side of the way westward, where some stones are left 

 standing, one particularly remarkable, called the 

 ■ Guggleby ' stone ' .... I guess by the celebrity and 

 number of the stones remaining there must have been 

 200 on a side " (he says the interval between the 

 stones was 35 feet, which would give about 7000 feet, 

 or nearly a mile and a third, or, allowing for the 

 thickness of the stones themselves, a mile and a half, 

 as the length of the avenue); " near them in several 

 places are remams of circles to be seen of stones set 

 on end, but there are no quantity of barrows about 

 the place, which I wonder at." Gough, in his edition 

 CI Camden (1806), says : — " .\t the south end of the 



' Continued from p. 251. 



- Journal .Anthropological Institute, November, 1885. 



■'• I'wenty-six chains S.W. of St. Michael's church. It is ahout 8 feet 

 hi^h, of a wedije-tike or conical shape, placed upright with the lieavy end 

 uppermost. (Ordnance surveyor's note.) 



village, on the common near the road-side [on the cast 

 side thereof] is an area upwards of half-a-mile long 

 and between 20 and 30 yards broad, of small stones; 

 and parallel to the road begins a double row of 

 immense granites, 3 or 4 yards diameter, and 8, 10, or 

 12 yards asunder, crossed at the end by another row,, 

 all placed at .some distance from each other. This- 

 alley extended within inemory over a mile quite 

 through the village, since removed to clear the 

 ground ; the space between the lines at the south-east 

 end is 80 feet, but near Shap only 59, so that they 

 probably met at last in a point. .At the upper end is a 

 circle of the like stones ]8 feet diameter." This de^ 

 scription is evidentlv taken by Gough from the 

 " History and .Antiquities of the Counties of Westmor- 

 land and Cumberland," by Joseph Nicolson, Esq., 

 and Richard Burn, LL.D. (London, 1777), an extract 

 from which has been obligingly communicated to me 

 by Col. Hellard, R.E., the director of the Ordnance 

 .Survey, and from which the remark enclosed in square 

 brackets has been taken. 



Mr. Lewis informs us that " Camden also men- 

 tioned an ebbing and flowing well, which Gough 

 said was lost, and that its peculiarity was purely 

 fortuitous ; still it might have been used for the advan- 

 tage of the priesthood who probably set up the stones. 

 . . . From the descriptions already quoted it would 

 seem that the avenue ran northerly or slightly north- 

 westerly " 



With such assiduity were these memorials of the 

 past removed that when the Ordnance survey was 

 made the final examiner recorded in the parish name- 

 book for .Shap (1858) : — " No one person in the parish 

 of Shap can point out the site of the old avenue of 

 granite stones, or can tell whether the small spot 

 well known as ' Karl Lofts ' ' is the S. or N. end of 

 the Monument. It is most likely the N. end, as about 

 ^ a mile S. is a ]3ortion of a circle still to be seen, 

 composed of huge granite boulders, and which prob- 

 ably is the southern turning of the Avenue. It would 

 appear to have been preserved in Doctor Burn's time, 

 but except 2 or 3 boulders, itself and all recollection 

 of it, have faded from .Shap." 



In spite of this, I think it has been possible to make 

 out the position and direction of the avenues from 

 the few stones shown on the Ordnance 25-inch maps 

 which Col. Hellard has been good enough to send me. 

 Taking the stones of which at least three are in the 

 same straight line, we get two avenues crossing to 

 the E. of the turnpike and to the south of the village, 

 as stated in the preceding descriptions. .As measured 

 on the 25-inch Ordnance sheet, the azimuths are 

 .S. ig° E. and S. 40° E. From measurements of the 

 contours on the i-inch map, the elevation of the 

 horizon is about 1° 10' in each case. 



These data give us declinations 32° 32' .S. and 

 25° 54' .S. respectively. 



In bringing together the information available 

 about avenues, I have been greatly struck by 

 the existence of several with an orientation 

 of S. 20°-3o° E. The first of this series 

 which I came across, on the ground, were 

 those at Challacombe, an imposing monument 

 once consisting of eight rows of stones with an orienta- 

 tion of N. 23° 27' W., or S. 23° 27' E. (" Stonehenge," 

 p. 15S). The rows might have been used in the south- 

 east direction to observe the rising of a southern star; 

 on the other hand, in the north-west direction, 

 they might have been aligned on the setting of 

 .Arcturus, warning the summer solstice sunrise in 

 1S60 B.C. 



As this date was near to those suggested by the 



J Ahout 47 chains S. by E. of St. Michael's church. 



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NO. 1999, VOL. 771 



