By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



59 



henge, those stones which we have been accustomed to look up to 

 I as of colossal proportions, now dwindle into comparative insignifi- 

 cance, by the side of their gigantic brethren. For (to speak only 

 of what I have myself seen and measured) while the statue of 

 Remeses weighed 887 tons, and each of the great stones of Baalbeck 

 weighed 900 tons, and measured 63 feet in length : the highest 

 stone at Stonehenge is computed to measure under 25 feet, while 

 the largest stone at Avebury is scarcely 20 feet in height, and its 

 weight about 62 tons ; and this is declared by Mr. Cunnington 

 and announced by Mr. Long, (the very able author of Abury 

 Illustrated) 1 to be the most massive sarsen stone in Wiltshire. 2 



Let me hasten to add that I do not say this in disparagement of 

 our famous Wiltshire temples ; " the first architectural witnesses 

 of English religion," as Dean Stanley calls them : 3 it would indeed 

 ill become me, as Secretary of the Wiltshire Archaeological Society 

 to do so : and such indeed is very far from my thoughts. But to 

 sum up the conclusions which may perhaps be drawn from the 

 facts to which I have been directing attention ; we may, I think, 

 reasonably conjecture, that those who erected Avebury and Stone- 

 henge, could have drawn the stones which compose them, by the 

 united strength of numbers, without any very great mechanical 

 knowledge : while in the words of Mr. Rawlinson, 4 " it is the most 

 reasonable supposition that the cross stones at Stonehenge and the 

 Cromlech stones, were placed in the positions where we now find 

 them by means of inclined planes afterwards cleared away." 



But if it is here objected, that it is unsound to argue from the 

 practice of those considerably advanced in scientific and mechanical 

 skill ; and apply this argument to the practice of a nation, which 

 shows no such tokens of enlightenment : I would submit in the 



1 Wiltshire Magazine, vol. iv., p. 336. " The specific gravity of Sarsen stone 

 is about 2500 or If times greater than that of water. The weight per cubic 

 foot is 154 lbs." 



2 " A larger specimen stood in the same structure a few years since, but is 

 now unhappily destroyed ; the weight of which was not less than 90 tons," 

 [Idem, p. 336.] 



3 Lectures on the Jewish Church, p. 59. 

 4 Ancient Monarchies of the East, p. 500. 



