But the real destructive agent has been man himself; savages could not have played more havoc with the monument than the English who have visited it at different times for different purposes. It is said the fall of one great stone was caused in 1620 by some excavations, but this has been doubted; the fall of another in 1797 was caused by gipsies digging a hole in which to shelter, and boil their kettle; many of the stones have been used for building walls and bridges; masses weighing from 56 lb. downwards have been broken off by hammers or cracked off as a result of fires lighted by excursionists. It appears that the temenos wall or vallum, which is shown complete in Hoare’s plan of 1810, is now broken down in many places by vehicles indiscriminately driven over it. Indeed, its original importance has now become so obliterated that many do not notice it as part of the structure--that, in fact, it bears the same relation to the interior stone circle as the nave of St. Paul’s does to the Lady Chapel (Fig. 10). It is within the knowledge of all interested in archæology that not long ago Sir Edmund Antrobus, the owner of Stonehenge, advised by the famous Wiltshire local society, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and the Society of Antiquaries, enclosed the monument in order to preserve it from further wanton destruction, and--a first step in the way of restoration--with the skilled assistance of Prof. Gowland and Messrs. Carruthers, Detmar Blow and Stallybrass, set upright the most important menhir, which threatened to fall or else break off at one of the cracks. This menhir, the so-called “leaning stone,” once formed one of the uprights of the trilithon the fall of the other member of which is stated by Mr. Lewis to have occurred before 1574. The latter, broken in two pieces, and the supported impost, now lie prostrate across the altar stone. [Illustration: FIG. 11.--The Leaning Stone in 1901.] This piece of work was carried out with consummate skill and care, and most important conclusions, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, were derived from the minute inquiry into the conditions revealed in the excavations which were necessary for the proper conduct of the work. Let us hope that we have heard the last of the work of devastators, and even that, before long, some of the other larger stones, now inclined or prostrate, may be set upright.