The President's Address. 



137 



quiry I may give an instance (without having myself verified it), 

 in Mr. Jackson's curious paper, in which he connects the stones of 

 Carnack with the legend of St. Ursula and the 11,000 British 

 virgins. The story of their being shipwrecked at Cologne is of 

 course ridiculously false. But he says that a competitor for power 

 during the Roman empire (many centuries before the date of the 

 fable), actually raised an army in Britain and conveyed it to Gaul. 

 That the men settled in Armorica, now Brittany, and sent for some 

 of their countrywomen as wives. That they embarked but met with 

 calamity on the Coast of Armorica. And that the rows of stones 

 there set are about eleven, and were set up as monuments to 

 them. 



After dwelling upon this part of the subject at some length, in 

 the course of which Sir John observed that every man in his own 

 particular neighbourhood might contribute a considerable amount 

 of information by the careful observation of details — trivial perhaps 

 in many cases, but in some most valuable, — he alluded to the theory 

 laid down by Mr. Fergusson that all British monuments were 

 subsequent to the Romans, and which, however unsound, derived 

 some countenance from the above story of St. Ursula. Sir John said 

 that since their last meeting at Hungerford investigations had 

 taken place at Silbury Hill, at which Mr. Fergusson was present, 

 when the idea that the hill was built upon the Roman road was 

 entirely disproved, the true line of road having been thoroughly 

 ascertained to the south of it. 



With regard to the particular locality of Chippenham Sir John 

 said it was situated between the slope of the oolite, the Cotswold 

 district, on the one side, and of the escarpments of the chalk and green 

 sand beds on the other. All this part of the country appeared in 

 ages gone by, to have been one great lake from Cricklade on the 

 one side, to the neighbourhood of Trowbridge on the other, and in 

 later times when the water had partly escaped through the Bradford 

 chasm, there had been several lakes in the neighbourhood ; the 

 whole country from Tytherton to Dauntsey is an evident lake bot- 

 tom of loam with gravel under. This must have at one time been 

 dammed by the ridge of Oxford clay running along the London 



