NA TURE 



May II, 1905 



NOTES ON STONEHENGE.' 



VI.— On the Solar Observations made in British 



Stone Circles. 



IN my last notes I referred to the star observations 

 which might be made by means of stone circles. 

 ] now pass to solar observations. 



I have already pointed out that much time has been 

 lost in the investigation of our stone circles, for the 

 reason that in many cases the e.xact relations of the 

 monuments to the chief points of the horizon, and 

 therefore to the place of sunrise at different times of 

 the year, have not been considered ; and when they 

 were, the observations were made only with reference 

 to the magnetic north, which is different at different 

 places, and besides is always varying ; few indeed 

 have tried to get at the real astronomical conditions of 

 the problem. 



The first, I think, was Mr. Jonathan Otley, who in 

 1S49 showed the " orientation " of the Keswick circle 

 ■" according to the solar meridian," giving true solar 

 l.r.ii-Iii"--, liin.iii'-lic.nt the vrar. 



and alignments in 1901, but other pressing calls on my 

 time then caused me to break off the inquiry. Quite 

 recently it occurred to me that a complete study of 

 the Stenness circles might throw light on the question 

 of an earlier Stonehenge, so I have gone over the 

 old papers, plotting the results on the Ordnance map. 



Now that the inquiry is as complete as I can make 

 it without spending some time in Orkney with a 

 theodolite, I may say that in my opinion Mr. Spence's 

 contention in his pamphlet on Maeshowe is confirmed, 

 although many of the alignments to which he refers in 

 support of it prove to be very different from those he 

 supposed and drew on the map which accompanies 

 his paper. 



The alignments on which he chiefly depended were 

 two, one running from the stone circle past the 

 entrance of Maeshowe to the place of sunrise at Hallo- 

 ween (November i), another from the same circle by 

 the Barnhouse standing stone to the mid-winter sun- 

 rise at the solstice. 



T give a copv of the Ordnance map showing the 

 true orienlntion of tho^c and of other ^iglit line*; I 



I wrote a good deal in Nature - on sun and star 

 temples in 189 1, and Mr. Lewis the ne.\t year ex- 

 pressed the opinion that the British stone monuments, 

 ■or some of them, were sun and star temples. 



Mr. Magnus .Spence, of Deerness, in Orkney, pub- 

 lished a pamphlet, " Standing Stones and Maeshowe 

 of Stenness,"^ in 1S94; it is a reprint of an article 

 in the Scottisli Review, October, 1893. Mr. Cursiter, 

 F.S.A., of Kirkwall, in a letter to me dated March 15, 

 1894, a letter suggested by my " Dawn of Astro- 

 nomy," which appeared in that year, and in which 

 the articles which had been published in Nature in 

 1891 had been expanded, directed my attention to the 

 pamphlet ; the observations had no pretension to 

 scientific accuracy, and some of the alignments are 

 wrongly stated, but a possible solar connection was 

 pointed out. 



I began the consideration of the Stenness circles 



^ Continued from vol. Ixxi. p. 538. 



- See especially Nature, July 2, i8gi, p. 201. 



3 Gardner ; Paisley and London. 



NO. 1854, VOL. 72I 



have made out. From this it will be seen that 

 observations of the sun were provided for on the days 

 in question, and that the circles and outstanding 

 stones were undoubtedly set up to guide astronomical 

 observations relating to the different times of the year. 

 Of course, as I have shown el.sewhere, such astro- 

 nomical observations were always associated with 

 religious celebrations of one kind or another, as the 

 astronomer and the priest were one. 



I shall not refer to all the sight lines indicated, but 

 deal only with those, bearing upon the Stonehenge 

 question, which I have without local knowledge been 

 able to test and justify. 



But first we must consider the astronomical differ- 

 ences between the rising of a star and of the sun, by 

 which we mean that small part of the sun's limb first 

 visible. 



It is too frequently imagined that for determining 

 the exact place of sunrise or sunset in connection with 

 these ancient monuments we have to deal with the 



