III.—On the Sarsen Stones of Berkshire and Wilts

Extract

Every one who has traversed our Chalk Downs must have noticed here and there shapeless masses of grey stones, half buried in the turf. Sometimes they are found in groups, like the shattered ruins of some ancient temple, and at other times they occur in isolated blocks, as though giant hands had hurled them at random over the hills in wanton sport. At one place, near the village of Kennet, they assume the appearance of a multitudinous flock of sheep, and are known by the appropriate designation of “Grey Wethers,” whilst at other places in the same vicinity they bristle on the hill-sides, and trail along the valleys like the débris of an avalanche or the moraine of a glacier. Nowhere do they exist in such profusion as on the west of Marlborough, but they are found scattered over the whole Chalk area of this district. At the western end of it they consist chiefly of saccharoid sandstone. Further east, especially around Newbury, they become smaller, harder, and more crystalline; whilst in the neighbourhood of Great Bedwyn, and occasionally elsewhere, they take the form of pudding-stone, being agglomerations of flint pebbles, cemented together in a matrix of siliceous sand.