By Professor T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., F.G.S., Sfc. 127 



hardened into a brown crust by this oxide. Fossils are extremely 

 rare in them, excepting some remains of plants, to be alluded to by 

 and by. 



Certain differences in constitution on the large scale, though the 

 majority are uniformly solid throughout, have caused some Sarsens 

 to have a lumpy structure, showing roundish portions throughout 

 the mass, especially when much weather-worn, just as if the material 

 had concreted at and around points at irregular distances apart, and 

 with varying results from unequal power of aggregation : hence 

 concretionary structure, with large or small irregular sandy kernels 

 of greater or less hardness and persistency. 



Occasionally a laminated structure is met with, visible only on 

 the weather-worn faces of some blocks. 



Lastly, the numerous superficial hollows and internal cavities may 

 be taken as belonging to structure, because they have been eaten 

 out, or worn bigger and deeper, by the natural agencies brought 

 to bear by wind and water on the soft parts of the stones, such 

 as soft lumps and lines in the mass, that is, spots and streaks of 

 weak material. 



IV. — Origin of the Name " Sarsen. - " 

 These " Greywethers/' " Druidstones," " Sarsdens," 1 " Sarsens," 

 or " Sassen/-' have received the last names, as the Rev. John Adams 

 has suggested (Transact. Newbury District Field-Club, vol. i., 1871, 

 p. 117, and Geolog. Mag., vol. x., p. 199), probably from the Saxon 

 Sar (Engl, grievous, troublesome; Scotch, sair), and Stan (a stone) ; 

 for they must have been sore hindrances 2 to the early clearers of the 

 land, — as, indeed, not unfrequently they are now. 



1 There is a village, Sarsden, in Oxfordshire, three and three-quarter miles 

 from Chipping-Nortou ; and Sarson is a tything of Andover in Hampshire. Mr. 

 Swayne reminds me that Aubrey suggests that Sarsden, in Hampshire, had or 

 may have had something to do with Sarsens. Canon Jackson and the late 

 Poulett Scrope, he tells me, went there to see if there were any vestige of them, 

 and found none. Sarsden (or Sarson) is in Amport parish, near Andover, and 

 lies on the Chalk. 



2 " When you spoke of the ' sore stones ' [in a lecture at Newbury, in 1880] I 

 thought of the struggle I had had with the boulders during some twenty months 

 of railway-construction in Sweden." Letter to T. R. J., from Mr. Henry Fidler, 

 December 4th, 1880. 



