240 A Review of " Pre-historic England" 



The descriptions of the round churches in England, of the 

 chapter houses of Cathedrals, and the Abyssinian Churches are 

 quite beside the mark ; while the combination of wood and stone 

 exhibited in the British dwellings represented on the Antonine 

 column at Rome, and in the " picturesque old houses that are yet 

 to be found in Gloucestershire and other English counties," cannot 

 possibly be cited as authorities for a similar combination of 

 these materials in the "structure of the circular pre-historie 

 temples." 



The following specimens of our writer's dogmatic assertions will 

 tend to show the extent of his qualifications for the task which he 

 imposed upon himself of enlightening the world respecting Abury 

 and Stonehenge. 



Page 400. " Two Geological formations have been laid under 

 contribution for the outer and the inner circle of Stonehenge ; 

 and the material of one of these groups is taken from a bed which 

 is the geological equivalent of the London clay." 



Mr. Cunnington or Mr. Prestwich would inform the reviewer 

 that the stones composing the outer circle at Stonehenge belong to 

 a series of beds beneath the London clay, called the " Woolwich 

 and Reading beds." 



Page 402. " Quarrymen, transporters and masons — such were 

 the builders of our forgotten capitals. They differ from their 

 Egyptian brethren in the circumstance that their labours do not 

 appear to have been directed by men of astronomical knowledge. 

 There is no such (astronomical) mark on our Wiltshire temples." 



Dr. Thurnam could have told him that " at a distance of about 

 200 feet from the outer circle (at Stonehenge), in the avenue 

 leading to the entrance to the temple, is an isolated unhewn stone, 

 apparently intended to direct the observation, at the summer 

 solstice, to the point of the rising of the sun. He (Dr. T.) had 

 himself tested this, and at Midsummer, 1858, had watched the 

 rising of the sun from the " altar stone," when it was seen to rise 

 precisely over the top of this stone. From this circumstance he 

 inferred that this temple was connected with a solar worship, which 

 was one of the chief characteristics of many ancient systems 



