STO 
ill the great labour he sustains to excel 
in that science. He despises fortune 
also; and he has solicited me twenty times 
to request the Duke to give him less em- 
ployment, which may not be worth the half 
of that he now has, in order to be more re- 
tired, and less taken olF from his favourite 
studies. He discovers sometimes, by me- 
thods of his own, truths which others have 
discovered before him. He is charmed to 
find on these occasions that he is not a 
first inventor, and that others have made a 
greater progress than he thought. Far 
from being a plagiary, he attributes ingeni- 
ous solutions, which he gives to certain 
problems, to the hints which he has found 
in others, although the connection is but 
very distant,” &c. 
Mr. Stone was author and translator of 
several useful works; viz. 1 . “ A New Ma- 
thematical Dictionary,” in 1 vol. 8vo. first 
printed in 1726. 2. “ Fluxions,” in 1 vol. 
8vo. 1730. The Direct Method is a trans- 
lation from the French of Hospital’s “ Ana- 
lyse des Infiniments Petits ;” and the In- 
verse Method was supplied, by Stone him- 
self. 3. “ The Elements of Euclid,” in 2 
vols. 8vo. 1731. A neat and useful edition 
of these Elements, with an account of tiie 
life and writings of Euclid, and a defence of 
his Elements against modern objectors. 
Beside other smaller works. Stone was a 
fellow of the Royal Society, and had in- 
serted in the “ Philosophical Transactions,” 
(vol. xli. p. 218) an “ Account of two spe- 
cies of Lines of the third Order, not men- 
tioned by Sir Isaac Newton or Mr. Stir- 
ling.” 
Stone denotes a certain quantity or 
weight of some commodities. A stone of 
beef, at London, is the quantity of eight 
pounds; in Herefordshire, twelve pounds; 
in the north, sixteen pounds. A stone of 
wool (according to the statute of 11 Henry 
VII.) is to weigh fourteen pounds ; yet in 
some places it is more, in otbeis less; as in 
Gloucestershire, fifteen pounds; in Here- 
fordshire, twelve pounds. A stone, among 
horse-coursers, is the weight of fourteen 
pounds. 
STONEHENGE, a celebrated monu- 
ment of antiquity, stands in the middle of a 
fiat area near the summit of a hill six miles 
distant from Salisbury, It is inclosed by a 
circular double bank and ditch, near thirty 
feet broad, after crossing which we ascend 30 
yards before we reach tlie work. The whole 
fabric consisted of tw'o circles and two 
ovals. The outer circle is about 108 feet 
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diameter; consisting, when entire, of 60 
stones, 30 uprights and 30 imposts, of which 
remain only 24 uprights, 17 standing and 7 
down, 31 feet asunder, and 8 imposts. 
Eleven uprights have their 5 imposts on 
' them by the grand entrance. These stones 
are from 13 to 20 feet high. The lesser 
circle is somewhat more than 8 feet from 
the inside of the outer one, and consisted of 
40 lesser stones (the highest 6 feet), of 
which only 19 remain, and only ll stand- 
ing : the walk betw'een these two circles is 
300 feet in circumference. The adytum, or 
cell, is an oval formed of 10 stones (from 16 
to 22 feet high) in pairs, wuth imposts, which 
Dr. Stiikely calls, trilithons, and above 30 
feet high, rising in height as they go round, 
and each pair separate, and not connected 
as the outer pair ; the highest 8 feet. Within 
these are 19 more smaller single stones, of 
which only six are standing. At the upper 
end of the adytum is the altar, a large slab 
of blue coarse marble, 20' inches thick, 16 
feet long, and 4 broad ; pressed down by 
the weight of the vast stones that have fall- 
en upon it. The whole number of stones, 
uprights, imposts, and altar, is exactly 140 . 
The stones are far from being artificial, but 
were most probably brought from those 
called the Grey Weathers, on Marlborough 
Downs, 15 or 16 miles off; and if tried with 
a tool, they appear of the same hardness, 
grain, and colour, generally reddish. The 
heads of oxen, deer, and other beasts, have 
been found on digging in and about Stone- 
henge; and human bones in the circumja- 
cent barrows. There are three entrances 
from tlie plain to this structure, the most 
considerable of which is from the north- 
east, and at each of them were raised, on 
the outside of the trench, two huge stones, 
with two smaller within parallel to them. 
It has been long a dispute among the 
learned, by what nation, and for what pur- 
pose, these enormous stones were collected 
and arranged. The first account of this struc- 
ture we meet with is in Geoffrey of Mon- 
mouth, who, in the reign of King Stephen, 
wrote the history of the Britons in Latin. He 
tells us, that it was erected by the counsel of 
Merlin, the British enchanter, at the com- 
mand of Aurelius Ambrosius, the last British 
king, in memory of 460 Britons, who were 
murdered by Hengist the Saxon. The nekt 
account is that of Polydore Virgil, who says 
that the Britpns erected this as a sepulchral 
monument of Aurelias Ambrosius. Others 
suppose it to have been a sepulchral momi-. 
ment of Boadicea, the famous British 
