B/j Professor T Rupert Jones, F.R.S., F.G.S, Sfc. 139 



sloping and undulating top, which has been smoothed by probably 

 modern wear before its enclosure. The sides are pitted or dimpled 

 by old weathering, and one side is somewhat furrowed, as it were, 

 by trickling water. An oblique oval spot on one side (possibly 

 marking the spot where a fossil stem was once imbedded) is repeated, 

 of a larger size, on the opposite face. The stone is cracked obliquely. 

 An incised inscription informs us that it was " Erected A.D. 1850. 

 William Pamphilon, Mayor " ; and the following, in metal letters— 

 Eadward, 901; Adelstan, 924; Eadmund, 943; Eadred, 946 ; 

 Eadwig, 955; Eadward, 975 ; and ^Sdelred, 978, refer to Saxon 

 Kings and the tradition of Kingston having been the place, and 

 this stone the seat of their coronation. [Edgar, 958, has been 

 omitted, having been crowned at Bath]. 



Looking at the Grey wethers near Clatford we are impressed with 

 the idea, not only that the old sand-beds once stretched across where 

 our country now stands, and have since been worn away or denuded, 1 

 but that they must have had far more extensive concretions in one 

 part than another, and that above where the larger numbers of 

 blocks now lie, there the hardened patches were strongest, thickest, 

 and most continuous : and if some be more conglomeratic than others 

 they were formed where the flint pebbles most congregated as 

 shingle on the old sea-bed. 



The streaming of the stones along the valleys, 2 and their unequal 

 distribution along their sides, suggest that the currents and tides 

 which wore away the old Tertiary sand-beds had some influence, 

 aided by prevalent winds, storms, and perhaps by floating ice of a 

 frigid climate, in shifting the blocks themselves, and leaving them 

 more in the hollows than on the hills. Such a wonderful field for 

 study and contemplation as these Valleys of Stones should certainly 

 be preserved, by parking off some good area of the Greywethers as 

 a place of National Interest. 



1 First recognized, before 1810, by William Smith ("the father of English 

 geology"), according to Mr. W. Cunnington, F.G.S. ; Wilts Mag., vol. iv., 

 p. 334. Mr. Cunnington, F.S.A., the fellow- worker with Sir Richard Colt 

 Hoare, was a friend of W. Smith, and has left a memorandum in his MSS. to 

 the above effect. 



2 So well described by Mr. W. Cunnington in the " Devizes Gazette " of June, 

 1852, and the Wilts Mag., vol. iv., 1858, p. 334 (as quoted by Mr. W. Long). 



