Professor T. Rupert Jones — Il'n^fory of Sarsen^. Til 



a naturally-shaped, angular, pyi-amidal, water-worn fragment of 

 Sarsen Stone as a prehistoric sacred stone. 



1876. A critical account of the lithology of Stonehenge, by 

 N. Story Maskelyne, was published in the Wilts Archaiol. Nat. 

 Hist. Soc, Mag., vol. xvii, pp. 149, etc. 



1881. With regard to the carrying and raising large blocks of 

 stone, the late Dr. V. Ball gave details and an illustrative plate of 

 the method used among the hill-tribes of India. (" Economic Geology 

 of India," 1881, p. 544, pi. viii ; see also note in Pt. i, 188G, p. 125.) 



1887. In a Reading newspaper (July 29, 1887) it was stated 

 that at Wardour Castle " the picturesque grounds are ornamented 

 with a pretty grotto and rockery, constructed from a number of 

 curious-shaped stones, which formed a prehistoric circle at Totbury," 

 said to have been at or near Place Farm. This circular work is 

 recorded as having had a large central stone, 12 feet high and 4 feet 

 wide. (Britton's Topog. and Hist. Descript. Wilts, 1814 ; and 

 W. H. Jones, Wilts Mag., vol. vii, 1863.) 



1887. The Stones of Stonehenge were the subject of Mr. W. 

 Whitaker's remarks in the Proc. Geol. Assoc, vol. ix, p. 530. 

 '• Dividing them roughly into two sets, the natives and the foreigners 

 {the former, of course, being the bigger), the latter are mostly of 

 igneous rocks, and must have been brought from a long distance ; 

 the largest of these, the altar stone, is a sandstone, but unlike any 

 sandstone of the neighbourhood. The natives are all greywether- 

 sandstone, or Sarsen stones which have been shown to be derived 

 from some of the older Tertiary beds, here probably from the 

 Bagshot Sand, which in these western parts comes nearer to the 

 Chalk than further east. Their occurrence, therefore, points to 

 a vast denudation of Tertiary beds, masses of clays and sands, tliat 

 once spread far and wide over the now bare plateau of Chalk, 

 having been slowly swept away, leaving behind only those hardened 

 parts of the sands, that could withstand the denuding agents, as 

 witnesses of the former extension of the beds." 



1890. Treating of some constructions by a prehistoric (Neolithic) 

 people in Wiltshire, Mr. F. J. Bennet alludes to the abundant local 

 occurrence of Sarsens ("Sketch History of Marlborough in Neolithic 

 Times," March, 1892, pp. 4, 8). He also indicates how Sarsens were 

 used by the Neolithic folk in the boundary walls of the terraces of 

 cultivatable ground in Wiltshire. That they were used afterwards 

 in the building of houses, castles, churches, etc., is well known. 



1894. Pebbles and flint-breccia in some Sarsens from Marlborough 

 Forest in Professor Prestwich's collection, seen July, 1S94. 



1896. From Avebury a white saccharoidal sandstone, with 

 siliceous cement, and containing an irregular, coarse, brush-like 

 group of sub-parallel, tubular, and filamentous cavities, probably 

 due to rootlets, stained with iron oxide. — F. Chapman. 



1901. The block that fell this Winter at Stonehenge contains 

 a layer of flints. It is No. 17 L (the lintel) of the map of Stonehenge 

 by the Archaeological Society of Wiltshire. — W. Cunmugtou, 

 January 9, 1901. 



