destroyed, but when
perfect was one of the largest.

Stonehenge, the later, is the most finished example of a megalithic
circle in England.

VII. DRUIDS

There seems to be no valid reason for supposing that Stonehenge was
erected by the Druids. (See page 67.)

VIII. THE BARROWS NEAR STONEHENGE

The Barrows round Stonehenge were the burial places of a bronze-using
race, of almost the same date as the Circle; they were erected mostly
after the building of Stonehenge, and are more numerous in this spot
than in any other part of England. (See page 73.)

SALISBURY PLAIN

"We passed over the goodly plain, or rather sea of carpet, which I
think for evenness, extent, verdure, and innumerable flocks, to be
one of the most delightful prospects in nature."--"Evelyn's
Diary," 1654.

There is not a county in England which does not pride itself upon some
outstanding characteristic which places it in a category by itself.
And if there be a thing particularly characteristic of Wiltshire, it
is "the Plain" of which John Evelyn above quoted has written so
kindly.

The word Plain is somewhat misleading, for the surface of the
Salisbury Downland is anything but even, as poor Samuel Pepys found to
his cost when he traversed it in 1668, and on his journey encountered
some "great hills, even to fright us." The actual truth lies midway
between the "evenness" of Evelyn and the "great hills" of Pepys, and
to the man of Wilts that word "Plain" will ever summon up a vision of
rolling downs, a short, crisp, elastic turf dotted with flocks, and
broken here and there by some crested earthwork or barrow, which rears
itself from the undulating Down, and breaks the skyline with its
sharp outline. It has been estimated that fully one-half of Wiltshire
consists of these high bare chalk downs which rise in bold rounded
bluffs from the valleys which thread their way through the county. It
is impossible to escape them. The Cotswold shepherd looks downward on
their folds, and marks the gleaming white of the occasional chalk pit
which breaks the surface of their scarp.

The huntsman in the Vale of the White Horse, and the farmer on the
fringe of the shady depths of the New Forest alike live in the
presence of the Wiltshire Downs. There is something of grandeur in the
immensity of their broad unbroken line stretching as they do, or did,
for mile upon mile, limited only by the horizon, a rolling sea of
green pasture.

And the