By the Rev, Bryan King, M.A. 



379 



And, lastly, in a note to his remarks upon the length of the 

 tennet avenue, he states (p. 370) " a shower of rain hindered me 

 from measuring* it." 



Now I submit that the inevitable inference to be drawn from these 

 extracts is, that the visits of Aubrey to Avebury were of a very 

 casual and cursory character, and further that his observation 

 founded on those visits was most careless and inaccurate ; for as Mr. 

 Jackson justly observes (p. 3:24), c< If we wish to know how far 

 Aubrey is trustworthy as to what is gone, his plans should be tested, 

 so far as they can, by what remains/'' 



I have already instanced one such test in the case of the large 

 Beckhampton stones ; and in reference to that blunder, so utterly 

 unaccountable in any person who had ever seen the stones in question, 

 a blunder by which Aubrey has transplanted these large stones from 

 their position in the Beckhampton avenue — a full mile eastward — to 

 a position in the Kennet avenue, I may surely ask, " Is it at all 

 surprising that any other stones ' lying about or half-buried in the 

 ground/ in the neighbourhood of those Beckhampton stones, should 

 not have ' attracted his eye as stones that had ever formed part of 

 the general structure 3 ? " 



I will now apply Mr. Jackson's test to the two instances selected 

 by himself, and then to some other similar ones. 



Aubrey, then, delineates the Kennet avenue as running in a 

 straight line from Avebury, whereas Stukeley describes it as " curving 

 a little/'' Now happily we have left standing a very massive 

 stone of this part of the avenue, in the east bank of the road 

 leading from Avebury to Kennet, which conclusively proves the 

 accuracy of Stukeley and the glaring inaccuracy of Aubrey's plan. 

 Of this part of the avenue Mr. Jackson says (p. 324), "Its course 

 in that part cannot be identified with certainty, but it may have 

 made a little deviation to avoid going up a hill.'" 



Now, for my part, I cannot conceive it even possible that those 

 who had moved the stone in question a distance of a mile-and-a-lialf 

 from the head of the " Grey Wethers," literally " up hill and down 

 dale," would be deterred from moving it a few yards further up a 

 slight acclivity in order to place it in its allotted position ; but, how- 



