By Dr. Phene, F.S.A., F R.G.S. 



245 



would be when the ancient Britons, just beginning to be educated 

 by the Romans, would have given their ready hands and sturdy 

 thews pliantly to the mental suggestion of those teachers, and that 

 they were wrought by metallic tools is evident. 



Now this is just what I have illustrated of the remains in the 

 Baleares. There is a distinct difference of date in the monuments 

 there. The older and more curious have been clearly stone-ham- 

 mered ; the latter, which I look on as Roman restorations, have a 

 precision which indicates the chisel. Near the latter, in particular 

 as already mentioned, many Roman remains have been found, as well 

 as at Stonehenge. 



The Phoenicians, as I have shown in the British Archaological 

 Journal, were less a nation than a race of leaders like the Normans. 

 They took into their service, often by force, people of any nation, 

 but always when they could of the higher and intellectual ones. 

 The minor Jewish prophets bitterly complain of their kidnapping 

 the J ewish youth and selling them to the early Greeks or Pelasgi, 

 and others. But they were a purely maritime people ; they had 

 their settlements on islands and coasts, not inland, still less so where 

 no metallic source existed. Therefore, while I admit the possibility, I 

 think it most improbable, that the larger construction is Phoenician. 

 The Roman works near Stonehenge, not alone for war, but for great 

 solemnities, being grander than any others of the kind in Britain, 

 indicate that here the Romans and Britons met on great occasions ; 

 while there are no Cyclopean or Pelasgic works nearer than Devon- 

 shire and Cornwall. Other evidence with which I cannot trouble 

 you leads still more conclusively in the same direction. 



But one example of such further evidence appears to me very 

 conclusive. The cap-stones at Stonehenge are of a peculiar form, 

 they are slightly wedge-shaped, i.e., wider at the upper or sky side, 

 a form precisely agreeing with all the horizontal stones, supported 

 on other stones, whether such supports are monoliths or otherwise, 

 in Minorca; and it appears to me that as every form and outline of 

 the older structures has been preserved, in what I consider the Roman 

 restorations in Minorca, this feature at Stonehenge is only a retention 

 of form of older cap-stones, whether of trilithons or other structures. 



