4 The Eleventh General Meeting. 



year. Westbury and Ilungerford would both afford good centres 

 of districts unexplored by us, and there is much yet to be investi- 

 gated in those places which we have visited more than once. I 

 had hoped in this visit to have explored some of the pit holes 

 supposed to be the remains of the villages of the aboriginal in- 

 habitants : there are many of these on the hill sides between 

 Pitton and Winterslow, and others at Tidpit near Martin, and near 

 Hanley in the Chase, which, though in Dorsetshire, are within 

 reach of your present centre. Then again there is the great work 

 of coming to some more certain conclusion as to the origin and 

 state of Stonehenge. It was suggested by Mr. Matcham that it 

 would be feasible with proper notice to get together savans from 

 different countries acquainted with that and similar monuments of 

 antiquity, and that a Stonehenge Congress should be assembled, at 

 which much might be done towards elucidating its history. I trust 

 this suggestion will not be lost sight of, for it is peculiarly within 

 the province of the Wiltshire Archaeological Society to take the 

 lead in such a scheme. At one time I had hoped to gain this for 

 our present meeting, but the time was too short to do it effectually. 

 A year's notice would not more than suffice, as the Congress should 

 be summoned through existing Archaeological Societies in different 

 parts of the world, and to give effect to the different papers and dis- 

 cussions, some notice should be given to those who were requested 

 to contribute to them. It was also suggested that the assembling 

 of such a congress might well be commemorated by raising the 

 trilithon that has fallen in the memory of man, and that we should 

 obtain leave to search under the supposed altar stone in the hope 

 of elucidating the date and the object for which the structure was 

 raised. I at once applied as your President to Sir Edmund Autrobus 

 for leave to carry out these proposals, if we found it possible at so 

 short a notice to get the proposed Congress together, and I am 

 convinced that Sir Edmund must have been as much suprised as 

 myself, to find that his kind and courteous refusal has magnified 

 him into the defender of our great national monument against the 

 ruthless destruction of it contemplated b}^ the Wiltshire Archaeo- 

 logists. We should indeed be unworthy of our name if we could 



