The Opening Meeting, 



101 



The Rev. Tupper Carey seconding" this, it was carried unanimously. 



The Rev. A. C. Smith proposed, and Mr. H. E. Medlicott 

 seconded, the appointment of Mr. C. F. Hart and Mr. G. S. A. 

 Way lew, both of Devizes, as Auditors of the Society, and this was 

 carried unanimously. 



The President, before he called on the Secretary to read a report 

 on the present condition of Stonehenge, the result of the visit of a 

 deputation appointed by the Society to inspect it, desired to remind 

 his hearers that Stonehenge was not merely a Wiltshire monument, 

 but one of national interest and world-wide celebrity; yet its protection 

 was almost nil. In Parliament, some few years ago, Sir John 

 Lubbock brought in a Bill for placing public monuments under the 

 protection of a public officer. The measure became an Act of 

 Parliament, and General Pitt Rivers, whose absence that day he 

 regretted, was appointed as national protector of ancient monuments. 

 He was not aware, however, that General Pitt Rivers had as yet 

 any considerable number of monuments under his protection, because 

 of course he could not protect anything which was not committed 

 to his protection by the owner. One monument — Barbury Castle — ; 

 about which he should say something presently, was included in the 

 Schedule of Sir J. Lubbock's Act, but is still in the hands of two 

 owners. He hoped, however, some arrangement would be made by 

 which its venerable mounds and precincts might be placed under the 

 national protection. Stonehenge, however, above all, required to be 

 placed under such protection. There ought to be some power, in 

 the Act of Parliament, to prevent owners of what was really national 

 property, in a higher sense than a great many more generally- 

 received forms of national property, from permitting the destruction 

 of monuments which were entirely irreplaceable, and sacred from a 

 venerable antiquity. They all knew how Avebury had been 

 destroyed by farmers in former times, and now the people who 

 were most destructive at Stonehenge were among those for whose 

 advantage the monument should be preserved. 



The Rev. A. C. Smith then proceeded to read the following 

 report, of which he said it required no words of introduction, as it 

 at once explained itself: — 



