each step, and in this they are guided by the man standing on the stone waving his wand.

Any of the methods I have described were perfectly possible to the builders of Stonehenge, and it is in the highest degree probable that the same or similar methods were employed by them for the transport of the stones from the places where they were found.

And in this connection it must not be forgotten that all the stones of Stonehenge occurred in its neighbourhood, within a radius of not many miles, as has already been pointed out, and had not to be brought from a distant locality.

Shaping and Dressing the Stones.—In this connection it is necessary to remember that the sarsens, of which the outer circle and the trilithons consist, occur naturally in more or less flat tabular blocks; usually of much greater length than breadth, and generally ranging in thickness from about 2 to 4 feet. On their surfaces they are often soft and friable, whilst in the middle they are dense and hard.

No single stone is of uniform hardness; some parts may be so soft that they can be rubbed away with the fingers, others so hard that they resist chipping with a steel chisel.

Originating as concretions in a bed of sand they had somewhat curved outlines, and usually one face, the under face, retained a more marked convexity than the other.

From what has just been stated it follows that as a rule but little material would have to be removed from their broad faces to reduce them to the symmetrical forms seen at Stonehenge.

To break off large pieces from their sides and ends was not a matter of great difficulty. It was probably accomplished by lighting strips of wood along the line where the fracture was desired; pouring cold water on it when sufficiently heated and then pounding the part to be detached with the heavy stone mauls. Pieces of considerable size could also be readily broken off by the use of the mauls alone. I may mention here that the line of holes seen on the upper side of stone No. 95, cut across one of its corners, is not, I think, contemporaneous with the erection of the circles, but of much later date, as the holes show but little signs of weathering although they are in such an exposed position. They

must often be filled with water in winter, and its alternate freezing and thawing could not have failed to have caused a very much greater amount of disintegration than their sides now present, had they been cut by the builders of Stonehenge.

Moreover, that the monoliths were not shaped by cutting holes along the line of desired fracture is, I think, satisfactorily proved by the large blocks of sarsen which were found in the excavations. These, it is not unreasonable to assume, had been detached from some of the monoliths in the process of shaping them, yet on none are there any traces of such holes. All, without exception, had simply rudely fractured surfaces.

This rough shaping of the sarsens doubtless generally took place at the spots where they were found; the final dressing only being performed in the immediate neighbourhood of the sites where they were to be set up.

To remove the inequalities resulting from this treatment, to reduce the stones to a proper thickness, and to give to their faces the slightly curved surfaces1 which many of the monoliths present, evidently required more tedious operations.

The mode in which these ends were attained is clearly evident on examining the surfaces of some of the stones, notably Nos. 59, 54, and the underside of 55a. On these will be seen several broad parallel and shallow grooves having a more or less prominent rib between them. This is well seen on the fallen stone.

These grooves were undoubtedly made with the stone mauls by violently pounding the stone with them in a line running longitudinally over the surface to be levelled or removed.

The action of a maul so used on the sarsen rock of which the stones consist was this: each blow fractured and disintegrated the surface over a considerable area and to a considerable depth, forming a shallow cavity, varying in size with the hardness of the rock and the violence of the blow. The procedure was as follows:-one or

It may be mentioned incidentally that the same curved surfaces are found on the internal faces of the huge megalithic blocks of which the dolmens in Japan are constructed whenever these are of hewn stone. See Archæologia, lv. 464.

more heavy blows were struck, the material detached was then brushed away, the blows were repeated, but near the edge of the cavity, the material again removed, and this was continued until the groove was completed.

The rib between each groove was broken away by side or vertical blows of the same implement.

Here I would point out that very few small chips of sarsen were found, although larger pieces were common. This is just what we would expect from this mode of dressing, as the material broken away would be either in a more or less pulverulent form or in pieces of considerable size.

On some of the stones, notably on Nos. 59, 54, and 52, transverse, but much narrower and shallower, grooves are seen which were made with the same mauls for facilitating the removal of the longitudinal ribs and the cutting down of the surface.

The sarsen uprights of the outer circle have each two tenons, and those of the horseshoe a single tenon, projecting from their upper extremities, which fit into corresponding mortices on the lintels and imposts. They were evidently troublesome to make, as with the exception of those on Nos. 60 and 56, they are generally of more or less irregular shapes and rude workmanship. In the case of the recently fallen upright, No. 22, they are merely low shapeless bosses of only about an inch or so in height; but even the best hewn could have been fashioned without difficulty, by the patient use of the quartzite hammerstones.

The hollowing out of the mortices on the lintels and imposts was a very easy matter. It was, I think, effected with water and sand by the very efficient process of turning round a stone of less size than the cavity until the required depth was attained, a method practised in Japan in the manufacture of stone mortars.

I am informed by Professor Flinders Petrie that precisely the same process was employed in Egypt in the much more difficult operation of making the exquisitely executed bowls of diorite and other hard stones so well known to Egyptologists. In his excavation at Abydos he had the good fortune to discover the site of an actual workshop where these vessels were made and in which there were