( 74S ) 
| December, 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
*** The Editor does not hold himself responsible for statements of fa&s or 
opinions expressed in Correspondence, or in Articles bearing the signature 
of their respective authors. 
ANCIENT “CUPS AND RINGS.” 
To the Editor of the Journal of Science. 
Sir, — In a contribution on “ Stone Circles and their Relation to 
Outlying Stones or Tumuli on Neighbouring Hills, &c. (“ Report 
Brit. Assoc.,” 1881, p. 697), Mr. A. S. Lewis affirms, “ from an 
examination of eighteen stone circles in Southern Britain,” it 
was “ shown that their builders had in various ways made spe- 
cial reference to different points of the compass, hut most parti- 
cularly to the N.E.” This information was extremely interesting 
to me, as about a year ago I had, from personal observation, no- 
ticed that the grooves connecting or going forth from the cups 
and rings on the celebrated groups of stones near the village of 
Ilkley, in Yorkshire, were generally axially in this direction, 
i.c., N.E. ( see Whitaker’s “ Craven,” p. 289), “ probably the most 
important group of archaic sculptures in England.” One cannot 
help, however, regarding these with suspicion, because the hand 
of one of those silly weak-minded individuals (whom it would be 
both a service and a pleasure to kick into the nearest asylum) 
has been at his sacrilegious work of desecration here, at least in 
one instance (shown not only by its clumsy execution, but being 
on a ground where the rock has only comparatively recently been 
split off). On the stone containing the best examples there are 
indications of an older set below — a suspicious circumstance. 
However, I feel pretty sure that they have a N.E. direction 
(20° N.E. ?) ; and perhaps the cups alone, where the rings have 
been obliterated by time, may be said to point in the same di- 
rection. I have seen none pointing any way but northwards. — 
I am, &c., 
Linnburn. 
D. Y. C, 
