8o 



Mauls. Stonehenge. 



The mauls used by the builders are masses of Sarsen, of 

 exceptional hardness and induration, approaching quartzite 

 in texture. — 43. 



It is probable that when the erection of Stonehenge was begun 

 Salisbury Plain was sprinkled over thickly with great 

 Sarsens, and more sparingly with darker coloured boulders, 

 the last relics of the glacial drift which had been nearly 

 denuded away. 



It is well known that scattered glacial boulders occur far south 

 of Wiltshire. One of a slaty rock, comparable in size of 

 the largest of these "blue stones," can be seen on the hills 

 to the south of Lo?idon. 



There is no one place from which all the foreign stones, well 

 recognised, could have been brought by the builders, and 

 in no case would they have deferred their chipping and 

 shaping till after a long and toilsome journey — a chipping 

 and shaping which, in some instances have reduced these 

 " blue stones " to half their original dimensions. 



Perhaps one ought to mention a few competitive theories of 

 Stonehenge. Giraldus Cambrensis, in 11 87, thought the megaliths 

 had been brought from the farthest parts of Africa by giants and 

 set up in Ireland, and afterwards transported to Britain and erected 

 as a memorial to those Celts who were slain at Ambresbury by the 

 concealed knives of Saxons. A fuller account had been given 

 previously, in 1147, by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He describes how 

 a fleet was got ready in the year of our Lord 490, with 1 500 men, 

 who made war upon the Irish and defeated them, and carried off 

 their great megalithic circle, their Giants' Dance, every stone of 

 which was known to possess some healing virtue. 



James Fergusson, who wrote in 1872, says in his " Rude Stone 

 Monuments," that the blue stones of Stonehenge probably came 

 from Ireland. 



Prof. Boyd Dawkins remarks in his " Early Man in Britain,'' 

 published 1880, that the foreign stones may have come from Wales, 

 Cornwall or from the Channel Islands ; and adds that the men who 

 carried them off must have been influenced by strong religious 

 feeling. The more so, perhaps, since Prof. Judd declares that there 

 is no one place where all the stones could have been found. 



Mr. Monckton thinks they were brought from " some distant 

 place" by an early race of men, and chipped at a later time by a 

 different people ; thus reverting to the views of Giraldus Cambrensis. 



And Mr. Clement Reid believes that they were brought up the 

 Avon on rafts from an erratic-strewn plain now sunk beneath 

 the sea. 



Leaving Stonehenge, it is necessary to glance at certain diffi- 

 culties presented by the chalk. Mr. R. M. Deeley has observed 



43 — Details of eight micro-sections, p. 114. 



