By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



155 



" navvies " of a remote age,) as they heaped up their vast tumulus, 

 soon losing sight of the tomb to guide them, would necessarily 

 fail to preserve it as their centre, and the more the mound increased 

 under their exertions, so in inverse ratio the chances diminished of 

 the cromlech retaining its original position in reference to its 

 gigantic covering. Moreover it is not probable that the workmen 

 would have been at any pains to preserve it as a centre, even if it 

 had been so at the first heaping up of the earth. 



Thus I deny that anything like a satisfactory examination of 

 the interior of Silbury has yet taken place, or that the fruitless 

 researches hitherto made are any proof that it contains no cromlech. 

 And now having answered the only objection put forth against the 

 sepulchral theory, I come to state the arguments I am able to 

 adduce in its favour : and here I would submit, that where absolute 

 proof is wanting, and, (until at least some further research is 

 made) opinions formed can at the last be but conjectures, rendered 

 more or less probable by the arguments adduced, it is quite fair to 

 reason from analogy : and here certainly the countless barrows 

 which stud the downs in every direction around Silbury being them- 

 selves places of sepulture, proclaim the great hill to be the same. I 

 need not stop to prove that to heap a mound of earth over their dead, 

 as a sort of protection to their remains, has been the most ancient and 

 uniform practice of all nations, 1 a fact referred to by the oldest 

 extant authors of all countries, 2 and of which we have in Wiltshire, 



1 The Soros which marks the grave of the Athenian dead is still a conspicuous 

 object on the plain of Marathon. [Wordsworth's Pictorial Greece, p. 113. 

 Leakes Demi of Attica, p. 99. Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii. p. 505.] 



2 The following list I have found in an unpublished MS. of Aubrey, and 

 which I have considerably amplified : the figures marked thus (*) being addi- 

 tions to Aubrey's catalogue : 



De Tumulis. 

 Josh : xxiv. 33. vii. 25, 26. viii. 29. 

 2 Sam : xviii. 17. 

 Homeri Iliad: ii. *793. 811—815. 

 vi. *419. 



vii. 332—336. *435. *86. 

 xi. *55. *166. *372. 

 xvi. *457. 667—675. 

 xxiii. 245 — 255. 



p 2 



