Mr Hayes lays stress upon a singular fact, the true explanation of which has long been an enigma--the frequent occurrence of a definite number of pillars in the stone-ring. Nine is not an uncommon number in England, though it is recorded from Ireland and Germany. (The stones of the Nine Maidens, near St Columb Major, in Cornwall, form a row, not a circle.) The cromlechs of Boscawen-ûn and the Dawns Mên, in Cornwall, of Whitemoorstone Down, Dartmoor, as well as the inner “horseshoe” at Stonehenge, have nineteen uprights. Thirty, again, is the tale of some circles, as in the outer ring of sarsens at Stonehenge. The group of nine is puzzling, but the arrangement of nineteen is held to represent the metonic, Indian, or lunar cycle of the astronomers. After the lapse of nineteen years, the sun and moon occupy relatively the same positions as at the commencement of the cycle, so that full moon and new moon recur on the same days of the months as before. Whether this astronomical explanation of the number nineteen can be proved or not, one curious feature deserves notice. The circles which show nineteen stones have a gap towards the East, and no explorations have hitherto brought a twentieth stone to light. It further appears that the old Gorsedd circles (p. 98 _supra_) consisted of twelve stones, set 30° apart, and said to represent the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The circles reared at the annual Eisteddfod by the neo-Druidic cult are arranged similarly. Besides the twelve pillars, three outstanding menhirs were fixed at the North-East, East, and South-East respectively so that the sun’s rays at the solstices, or the equinoxes, as might be, fell on the central stone, or “chair” within the circle. And, by a strange coincidence--or is it due to imitation?--another plan of the Gorsedd circle, as preserved in ancient manuscripts, gives nineteen stones, with a gap towards the East. In this case, eight outstanding pillars were erected, so as to indicate, by shadows or rays, (1) the summer and winter solstices, (2) the old May-December agricultural year, (3) the equinoxes, and, possibly, (4) other solar and lunar periods. The weakness in the foregoing theories seems to lie in the assumption, up to the present unproved, that the primary purpose of the cromlechs was to serve as places of assembly. True, the convocations are supposed to have been hedged with much ceremony, to which the stones were accessory. But, dealing with circles, are we not liable to argue in a circle? Until the prime purpose of the cromlechs is ascertained, the student is forced back like the turnspit in _Hudibras_: “And still he’s in the selfsame place Where, at his setting out, he was.”