The President's Address, 



9 



the sarsen stones which cover the surface of the Wiltshire downs. 

 ' As the chalky matter of the earth hardened at creation/ he says, 

 f it spewed out the most solid body of the stones of greater specific 

 gravity than itself, and, assisted by the centrifuge power owing to 

 the rotation of the earth upon its axis, threw them upon its surface, 

 where they now lie. This/ he adds, ' is my opinion concerning 

 this appearance, which I often attentively considered/ We are not 

 without our Stukeleys at the present time, when the progress of 

 science has lessened the excuse for us, and we ought, therefore, to 

 be lenient to our predecessors. f Two things we ought to learn 

 from history/ says Dr. Arnold in his lectures on modern history 

 published in 1841, f one, that we are not ourselves superior to our 

 fathers ; another, that we are shamefully and monstrously inferior 

 to them if we do not advance beyond them/ And this, if it is not 

 borne out by an extended view of human nature, or by the light of 

 recent discovery, is nevertheless sufficiently true to prevent our 

 exulting over our ancestors in consequence of our superior knowledge, 

 It would be a profitless task to recount the opinions of our prede- 

 cessors if we did not find fault with their methods and their con- 

 clusions ; but, in doing so, we must not be taken to condemn them 

 personally because they do not represent the uppermost rungs of 

 the ladder that we are climbing. Sir Richard Colt Hoare was the 

 first to apply himself to the study of our Wiltshire tumuli by the 

 only satisfactory method, viz., by excavation in them. Taking for 

 his motto, " We speak from facts, not theory/ he opened three 

 hundred and seventy-nine barrows, and recorded their contents in 

 two folio volumes, with ample illustrations. He differentiated the 

 long from the round barrows, and showed that the former contained 

 no metal implements, and none but the rudest kinds of pottery, and 

 that they were probably the earliest, but he did not thoroughly 

 establish a Stone Age, and it is a question whether those most 

 valuable items of evidence, the flint flake and the scraper, did not 

 entirely escape his notice. When we consider the time that he 

 devoted to his excavations, and the number of them that must have 

 passed under his eyes, we may well ask what evidence we ourselves 

 are failing to notice, through ignorance of its bearing upon our 



