Lord _Pembroke_ caus’d several of these stones to be dug under, and found them loose, and detach’d. My lord computed the general weight of our stones at above fifty tun, and that it required an hundred yoke of oxen to draw one. Dr. _Stephen Hales_ makes the larger kind of them to be seventy tun. Mr. _Edward Llwyd_, in his account of the natural history of _Wales_, _Phil. Trans. abridg’d_, Vol. V. 2. p. 118. writes, he found a strange appearance of great stones, and loose fragments of rocks on the surface of the earth, not only on wide plains, but on the tops too of the highest mountains. So the moor stones on the wastes and hill-tops of _Cornwall_, _Derbyshire_, _Devonshire_, _Yorkshire_, and other places, of a harder nature than these, and much the same as the _Egyptian granite_. [Illustration: TAB. IX. _The Roman road leading from Bekampton to Hedington July 18. 1723._ _Stukeley del._ _Vᵈʳ. Gucht. Sculp._] As to the internal texture of this stone, when broke, it looks whitish like marble. It would bear a pretty good polish, but for a large quantity of bluish granules of sand, which are soft, and give it a grayish or speckled colour, when smooth’d by an engine. It consists, as all other stones, of a mixture of divers substances, united by lapidescent juices, in a sufficient tract of time. Sometimes in one stone shall be two or three colours, sometimes bits of flints kneaded amongst the rest. In one stone fetch’d from _Bekamton_ avenue, near _Longstone barrow_ (as commonly call’d) and which was broken and made into a wall, at the little alehouse above _Bekamton_, in the _Devizes_ road, I saw several bones, plainly animal, part of the composition of the stone. This I admir’d very much, and concluded it to be antediluvian. The stone in general is shining, close, and hard, little inferior to common marble; yet the effect which time and weather has had upon it, far beyond what is visible at _Stonehenge_, must necessarily make us conclude the work to be many hundred years older in date. In some places I could thrust my cane, a yard long, up to the handle, in holes and cavities worn through by age, which must needs bespeak some thousands of years continuance. CHAP. IV. _The figure of the temple of_ Abury _is a circle and snake._ Hakpen, _another oriental word still preserved here, meaning the_ serpent’s head. _The chorography of_ Abury. _A description of the great circle of stones_ 1400 _foot in diameter. Of the ditch inclosing it. The vallum form’d on the outside, like an amphitheater to the place. This represents the circle in the hieroglyphic figure. Of the measures, all referring to the ancient eastern cubit which the Druids us’d._