58 



On British Stone and Earthworks 



intention of these Danish circles and squares and triangles, abundant 

 though they are on the coast of Jutland, I do not think the Danish 

 antiquaries have ever determined. 1 I am very glad that the Society 

 will visit our Wiltshire circle on Thursday; and I trust some light 

 may be thrown on this mysterious problem, if from no other, at any 

 rate from the President of our Society, than whom there is no better 

 authority on British antiquities. 2 



I come now to the second division of my subject, the Earthworks 

 of the early Britons. However worn down and depressed from their 

 original elevation many of them may be from atmospheric and other 

 influences through so many centuries, they will be found by any 

 who take the trouble to measure them, still to be of considerable 

 proportions, indeed when we take into account the very primitive 

 implements which alone those who made them possessed, their di- 

 mensions are in some cases perfectly astonishing : for the scoops 

 with which they dug out the soil of which they are made, could be 

 formed of no better material than wood or stone or horn or bone, 

 and they would have carried the earth or stone so quarried in nothing 

 better than baskets, probably (as with modern uncivilized nations) 

 on their heads. But as we examine some of the larger works, such 

 as the huge ditch and bank which surrounds the mystic circle of 

 Abury ; or the mighty boundary of Wansdyke, or the vast mounds 

 of Silbur3 r and that in the Marlborough College grounds, we are 

 amazed no less at the daring of the architect whose brain conceived 

 such immense designs, than at the perseverance of the workmen 

 who carried out these herculean tasks. 



1 For an exemplification of such diminutive stone circles, oblongs, triangles, 

 and other forms, see the Plan of the Promontory of Hjortehammer " Plan af 

 Hjortehammers Odde ved Tromto, Forkjserla Sogn," in the Danish " Blekinske 

 Mindesmgerker," by J. J. A. Worsaae. The circles on the shore of the Island of 

 Amirom were first described in the German publication Kieler Berichte, xx., 

 p. 17 — 22, cited (with copy of the drawing) in Worsaae's Slesiigs Oldtidsmvnder, p. 

 98, from which they are reproduced in the Journal of the Archaeological Institute, 

 vol. xxiii., p. 187, in a translation of Worsaae's " Antiquities of South Jutland 

 or Sleswick," by Mons. C. C. A. Gosch, Attache to the Danish Legation. 



2 The Society did visit the circle, and much interest was shown in the work. 

 No one, however — not even Sir John Lubbock — could give any opinion as to its 

 probable object. 



