60 On the Method of Moving Colossal Stones. 



first place, that the stones of Avcbury and Stonehcngo must have 

 been transported and erected by some means, and what more pro- 

 bable method can be shown ? And in the next place I am not 

 attributing to our British architects anything like the skill of their 

 Assyrian and Egyptian contemporaries, who were confessedly so 

 far their superiors in civilization, science and art : but I do hold, 

 that if those advanced nations of antiquity could transport their j 

 colossi and erect their megalithic structures (many of which mono- 

 liths weighed ten times more than our largest Wiltshire stones) 

 by the sheer force of numbers, aided only by such simple mechanical; 

 contrivances, as the roller, the lever, and the wedge: it seems; 

 likely that the founders of our "Wiltshire temples would, with an; 

 unlimited command of human strength, even without the assistance; 

 of any mechanical knowledge, if we should deny them this, be able> 

 to effect on a comparatively small scale what their more advanced) 

 contemporaries did to such an astonishing extent. And therefore; 

 I would claim for the early inhabitants of our downs who builfy 

 Stonehenge and Avebury, the same motto which the Wiltshire! 

 Archseological Society of this day has adopted for its badge,| 

 "Multorum manibus grande levatur onus." 



Alfred Charles Smith.] 



Yateshury Rectory, Calne, 

 July, 1865, 



