cite the Druids and their late Celtic cult
in dealing with a monument which, on his own showing, was built in
early Bronze times. There must exist a very wide gap of anything from
seven hundred to a thousand years between the "May Year" Druids of
whom he writes, and the builders of Stonehenge, and an interval
possibly as great or even greater between Stonehenge and Avebury and
those other north-east and south-east temples to which he attributes a
Druidic form of worship. It is even a matter of grave question if the
race who built the Stone Circles was not entirely different to the
late Celtic inhabitants of the plain. Avebury has been classed as a
Neolithic monument, built by the "long-headed" race whose remains are
usually found in the Long Barrows; Stonehenge belongs to a bronze
period, but at a very early date in that culture; its builders would
probably belong to the round-headed type of man whose barrows are
studded very closely round about it.

THE BARROWS OF SALISBURY PLAIN

It is impossible to approach Stonehenge without passing numbers of
burial mounds or Barrows. North, south, east, or west they meet the
eye, some singly, some in groups. In the immediate neighbourhood of
Stonehenge there are two Long Barrows and three hundred Round ones,
or, in other words, one-fourth of the Barrows in Wiltshire are to be
found within a short distance of the Altar Stone of Stonehenge. This
cannot altogether be accidental. The suggestion at once rises to the
mind that these burial places clustering about the circle of
Stonehenge are strongly reminiscent of the graveyard about the village
church of to-day. The Rev. William Gilpin, writing in 1798, when as
yet the Plain was unbroken by the plough and cultivation, recognised
this fact at once. "All the Plain, at least that part of it near
Stonehenge, is one vast cemetery.... From many places we counted above
a hundred of them at once; sometimes as if huddled together, without
any design, in other places rising in a kind of order. Most of them
are placed on the more elevated parts of the Plain, and generally in
sight of the great Temple." At one time it was considered that these
Barrows were the monuments erected to the memory of warriors who had
fallen in battle. Though this popular conception is still current, it
seems hardly likely that a victorious army would tarry after the day
was won to erect these laborious monuments, all of which are designed
and laid out with no