106 



The Fiftieth General Meeting. 



but of all archaeologists, to Sir Edmund Antrobus. On one point 

 Mr. Goddard ventured to question the accuracy of the opinions 

 expressed by Dr. Gowland and Professor Judd as to the probability 

 that all the stones of the structure — the " blue stones " as well 

 as the sarsens — were found on or near the spot. With regard 

 to the sarsens, those who know the country know that, roughly 

 speaking, to the south of Upavon on the Avon Valley practically 

 hardly any sarsen stones are found — a few small and hard 

 quartzites, it is true, are to be seen here and there beside the roads 

 in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge — but with the exception of 

 the big stone in the river at Bulford and one or two others, no 

 large sarsens are to be seen now either on the Plain or in the 

 villages. If they had ever been there, there the remains of them 

 would be now. Everyone who knews anything of the sarsen country 

 about Marlborough and Avebury, and Swindon, knows that no stone 

 is so indestructible, and that though the big stones may be broken 

 up and disappear, their remains will continue to exist in the gate- 

 posts, the garden walls, the houses, and the pitched paths of the 

 villages. North of Upavon all the old walls of houses and gardens 

 are built of sarsen stone — whereas to the south of this point you 

 will hardly find a single sarsen wall or a piece of sarsen pitching. 

 The old garden walls of the Plain and of South Wilts are universally 

 built of mud, and the gateposts are never of sarsen. In Amesbury 

 itself there are no signs of sarsen used as building stones. More- 

 over, the existence of the well-known legend as to the stone in the 

 river at Bulford shows that sarsens were never common in that 

 neighbourhood. Nobody would ever think it necessary to invent 

 such a story to account for. the presence of such a stone anywhere 

 in the Marlborough district. In fact the whole of the evidence 

 goes to prove that there never were any number of large sarsens 

 on the Plain (if there had been they could not have so completely 

 disappeared), and that the older belief that they came from the 

 neighbourhood of Marlborough or Lockeridge — where great num- 

 bers still exist — is far more likely to be correct. As regards the 

 " blue stones," Professor Judd suggests that they were " erratic " 

 blocks found on the spot. In support of this theory he can only 



