Friday, July 17th. 



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say that " erratics " have been found south of the Plain, and by 

 way of getting over the difficulty of the absence of any such 

 " foreign " stones anywhere else on the Plain now, supposes that 

 there were others once, but that they, in common with the sarsens 

 have been broken up and used for various purposes, and so have 

 disappeared. Against this is to be set the fact that no one has 

 ever heard of any such erratics on the Plain, and that an unenclosed 

 and until recently wild district, such as this, is the last place from 

 which any such stones would disappear if they had ever existed. 

 Mr. Goddard, moreover, pointed out that in the recently-published 

 Memoir of the Geological Survey on the Geology of the Country 

 round Salisbury ; it is expressly said that : — 



" No trace of erratics has yet been met with in this area, and it seems 

 probable that the peculiar far-transported blocks seen in the middle of 

 Stonehenge were brought from low lands now destroyed by, or sunk beneath 

 the sea, lying off the present mouth of the Avon . . . and carried up 

 the Avon on rafts." 



This theory is at least easier to believe than the idea that the 

 builders of Stonehenge used up the entire supply of " erratics " 

 which they found conveniently deposited for them on the spot. 

 Mr. Story Maskelyne agreed with what Mr. Goddard had said 

 as to the origin of the " foreign " stones. He had no belief whatever 

 in the theory of their being " erratics " found on the spot. He 

 believed that the old theory that they were brought from a distance 

 was the true one. He eulogised the work that had been done by 

 Sir Edmund Antrobus, and on the vexed question of the enclosure 

 and the barbed wire he expressed the opinion that after all the 

 preservation of the monument for future ages was a vast deal more 

 important than the unrestricted right of access of the public to it 

 at the present moment — and that in whatever way the matter was 

 eventually decided, some form of enclosure would be found to be 

 necessary ; a statement with which it is safe to say the great 

 majority of the assembled company agreed. 



One thing at least was evident, that the barbed wire fence is by 

 no means the obstruction to the view, or the monstrous blot, that 

 writers to the papers would have us believe, and that the present ♦ 

 aspect of the monument is a great deal more seemly than was the 



