By Professor T. Rupert Jones, F.B.S., F.G.S , Sfc. 143 



is generally referred to the Wool wich-and- Reading- beds, and does 

 not appear to occur westward of Little Bedwin. There the 

 ground is strewed with blocks of Sarsen stone ; not the ordinary 

 saccharoidal Greywether sandstone occurring on the Downs, but the 

 harder, finer-grained variety, of which the blocks in the Vale of 

 Pewsey also consist." The blocks are irregular in form, rounded 

 and smoothed as if by water, and often pitted on both upper and 

 under surface, with small deep holes, caused by the decay apparently 

 of stem-like objects about the size of a large straw. These were 

 determined to be of vegetable origin and rootlets, but nothing 

 further. Fragments of coniferous wood, he adds, have been found 

 in the Sarsens. 



The frequent occurrence of the rootlet-pipes was noticed in my 

 own papers in the Geol. Mag., Dec. 2, vol. ii., 1875, p. 588; ibid., 

 vol, in., 1876, p. 523; Transact. Newbury, District Field Club, 

 vol. ii., 1878, p. 248; and Proceed. Geol. Assoc., vol. vi., 1881, 

 p. 441. Camberley (near Frimley), Sandhurst, Long Lane (north 

 of Newbury), Marlborough Downs, and Avebury, were mentioned 

 particularly as localities. There are numerous examples in Mr. Nevil 

 Story Maskelyne's great collection at Basset-Down House, mentioned 

 above at p. 138 ; and some in Mr. W. Cunnington's collection. In 

 1885 Col. C. Cooper King, F.G.S., noticed and sketched (Fig. 2) 

 a very definite root-mark, somewhat different from the usual vertical 

 straw-like irregularly parallel stems and rootlets (Fig. 3), at Abury; 

 and Mr. W. Carruthers, F.R.S., gave the result of his careful ex- 

 amination of both this drawing and some of Mr. Codrington's 

 specimens, in the Geol. Mag., Dec. 3, vol. ii., 1885, pp. 361—2. 

 Referring to the latter, he writes : " These vegetable remains are 

 certainly roots. The method of branching shown in some of the 

 specimens, and shown still better in a pencil-sketch by Major [now 

 Col.] C. C. King, from a Sarsen which has been weathered in a 

 wall at Abury, leave no doubt as to this. The rootlets leave the 

 main root in every direction at right angles, The roots are in their 

 original position. The soft sand, now indurated by siliceous cement, 

 has been the soil on which the plants grew. An examination of the 

 preparations show the main stem to have been composed of a small 



