By William Gowland, F.S.A., F.C.L 



1 



No digging was carried on except in the presence of Mr. Blow, 

 Mr. Stallybrass, or myself, and I made a point of being at the 

 excavation before the work of each day began, and remaining until 

 it was finished. 



A watchman was on duty at night to ensure that the excavations 

 should not be tampered with. 



Bocks of which the Stones consist. 



Before proceeding to describe the excavations it may be well to 

 consider briefly the chief kinds of rock of which the stones of 

 Stonehenge consist, and of which chippings and fragments 1 were 

 so numerous in the ground excavated. 



The large monoliths of the outer circle and the trilithons of the 

 horseshoe are all sarsens. These sarsens in their composition are 

 sandstones, consisting of quartz-sand, either fine or coarse, oc- 

 casionally mixed with pebbles and angular bits of flint, all more 

 or less firmly cemented together with silica. They are the relics 

 of the concretionary masses which had become consolidated in the 

 sandstone beds that once overlaid the chalk of the district, and had 

 resisted the destructive agencies by which the softer parts of the 

 beds were removed in geological times. They range in structure 

 from a granular rock resembling loaf sugar in internal appearance 

 to one of great compactness similar to and sometimes passing into 

 quartzite. 



The monoliths and trilithons all consist of the granular rock. 

 The examples of the compact quartzite variety, of which many 

 were found in the excavations, were, almost without exception, 

 either hammerstones that had been used in shaping and dressing 

 the monoliths, or fragments which had been broken from off them 

 in these operations. 



The small monoliths, the so-called " bluestones," which form the 

 inner circle and the inner horseshoe, are, with the undermentioned 



1 I am indebted to the kindness of my friend Professor Judd, Dean of the 

 Royal College of Science, for the identification of the specimens of rock 

 found in the excavations. The above is merely a rough summary of the more 

 important kinds. For a complete account of them the reader is referred to 

 Professor Judd's note (post). 



