1]0 The Thirty -third General Meeting* 



the area enclosed let there be some authority such as was given under 

 Sir John Lubbock's Act, making it a legal offence to injure any 

 part of the grand old monument. A light iron fence that would 

 hardly be seen from a distance was, to his mind, preferable to either 

 a ha-ha or a heavy impregnable mass of iron railing. Of course 

 they must always have within it someone to represent the law. In 

 that way they might defend Stonehenge from human depredators. 

 Rabbits might be kept out by a rabbit fence 4ft. high, attached to 

 the other fence, and sunk a few inches into the ground. The law 

 was always a stronger fence than any of a material description. He 

 believed that the national sentiment in favor of preserving a 

 place like Stonehenge, would, when such a symbol of authority 

 was put up, with a man inside it — a policeman, if they liked — with 

 authority to arrest an offender and to assert the law, be found to be 

 the most economic and effectual way of performing this national duty. 

 Touching on that part of the report about replacing some of the 

 stones : no doubt they would have a great outcry about this ; for 

 there were many people who thought that to replace a pinnacle on 

 a Church tower, or an old monument that was lost, was a sort of 

 sacrilege. He confessed he was not one of those. He thought if 

 they could really restore, in the true sense of the word — replacing — 

 it was the best duty they could perform towards an ancient monu- 

 ment. The great trilithon that fell in 1797 could undoubtedly be 

 replaced where it was without any difficulty ; and with regard to 

 the leaning stone, which the deputation did not propose to restore, 

 he confessed he never looked at it without trembling. Any day 

 something might happen — a rabbit burrowing beneath it, or a frost 

 coming after much rain, or anything that should just shake the 

 small bit of earth that held the stone in its place, and that stone 

 would come down and crush one of the most interesting stones of 

 Stonehenge. Therefore, he maintained that they ought to do some- 

 thing to keep it in its place, or to endeavour to bring it a little 

 more into the perpendicular. The rubble beneath the stones being 

 undermined ought to be replaced with best modern cement, and 

 they could be then kept in their places without interference with the 

 aspect of the monument, or the position of the stones : and it might 



