120 Professor T. Rupert Jones — History of Sarseiis. 



the Bristol Naturalists' Society, new series, vol. ix, pt. i, 1898), 

 refers to the Sarsen Stones as follows : " Observed between Silbury 

 and Marlborough the Stones called Grey weathers, which in one 

 particular valley were scattered about in great numbers on the 

 surface of the ground. The people in that neighbourhood were 

 breaking great numbers of them, either to mend the roads or build 

 houses, which gave me an opportunity of examining them and 

 bringing away some pieces, which I found to be of a very hard 

 and fine-grained Sand Stone. Whether it is found in beds in any 

 part of this countrey I will not venture to say, but remember that 

 some time ago, in seeing General Conway's place near Henley 

 [Oxfordshire], I saw a large heap of such stones, some of them of an 

 immense size ; and, on asking where they were got from, was told 

 that they were found scattered all over that countrey, lying on the 

 stratum over the Chalk at different depths, and that those I saw had 

 been got togethei*, at a large expence, for some work to be done in 

 the General's grounds — I think a bridge." 



N.B. — This heap of large Sarsens must not be confused with the 

 dolmen from Jersey reconstructed by General Conway in his 

 grounds in the same locality, for the latter was necessarily only 

 of granitic and such like rocks, native to Jersey. See also " The 

 Channel Islands," by W. T. Austin & E. G. Latham, 1862; 

 J. Fergusson's "Rude Stone Monuments," 1872, pp. 51, 52; and 

 W. C. Lukis in the Trans. Internat. Congress Prehistoric Archasol. 

 Norwich, 1869, p. 221. 



1833. In the Gentlemari's Magazine, vol. ciii, p. 542, is a notice 

 of a paper read by Dr. G. T. Clark to the Bristol Philosophical 

 Society, in which he alludes to the " Grey weathers " as being 

 " scattered over the Chalky Downs of Wiltshire." 



1863. W. H. Hudleston, in the Proc. Geol. Assoc, vol. vii, p. 138, 

 gives a succinct account of the four kinds of stones that constitute 

 the concentric rings of Stonehenge. The huge Sarsens composing 

 the outer ring he described as consisting of a compact quartzose 

 rock, derived from the Tertiary Sands. " These are, in fact, siliceous 

 doggers or concretionary slabs of enormous size, which have hardened 

 in situ [in their original beds], and have resisted the atmospheric 

 agencies of destruction. Several fragments were picked up of this 

 material, which seemed to bear the marks of roots or something 

 of the sort. It is by no means improbable, therefore, that the 

 decomposition of vegetable matter, and consequent formation of 

 humus, and the various organic acids which arise from its gradual 

 alteration into carbonic acid, may have had something to do with 

 the concretionary action. The influence of these organic acids on 

 silica has been the subject of interesting investigations in America." 



1871. Dr. Joseph Stevens, "On the Geology of North Hamp- 

 shire," mentions the occurrence of a Greywether grindstone at 

 St. Mary Bourne, Wilts. (Trans. Newbury District Field Club, 

 vol. i, p. 86.) 



1874. C. E. Davy, in a paper contributed to the Newbury 

 District Field Club, "Letcombe Castle," 1874, p. 23, describes 



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