As before stated, I have dealt with the solstice in this chapter because it affords us the most precise case. I hope to be able to deal with the May year sun in the same way later on. CHAPTER XIII STENNESS (Lat. 59° N.). I wrote a good deal in _Nature_[20] on sun and star temples in 1891, and Mr. Lewis the next year expressed the opinion that the British stone monuments, or some of them, were sun and star temples. Mr. Magnus Spence, of Deerness, in Orkney, published a pamphlet, “Standing Stones and Maeshowe of Stenness,”[21] in 1894; it is a reprint of an article in the _Scottish Review_, October, 1893, showing that the stones were set up for solar worship. Mr. Cursiter, F.S.A., of Kirkwall, in a letter to me dated March 15, 1894, a letter suggested by my “Dawn of Astronomy,” which appeared in that year, and in which the articles which had been published in _Nature_ in 1891 had been expanded, directed my attention to the pamphlet. I began the consideration of the Stenness circles and alignments in 1901, but other pressing calls on my time then caused me to break off the inquiry. Quite recently it occurred to me that a complete study of the Stenness circles might throw light on the question of an earlier Stonehenge, so I have gone over the old papers, plotting the results on the Ordnance map. [Illustration: FIG. 38.--Maeshowe, in the foreground, and the Stones of Stenness. From “Notice of Runic Inscriptions,” by James Farrer, M.P. (1862).] Now that the inquiry is as complete as I can make it without spending some time in Orkney with a theodolite, I will begin my reference to other circles besides Stonehenge by stating the conclusions at which I have arrived with regard to the stones of Stenness. In the first place I may state that although many of the alignments to which Mr. Spence refers in his pamphlet on Maeshowe prove to be very different from those he supposed and drew on the map which accompanies his paper, the main point of his contention is amply confirmed. I give a copy of the Ordnance map showing the true orientation of these and of other sight-lines I have made out. The alignments on which Mr. Spence chiefly depended were two, one running from the stone circle past the entrance of Maeshowe to the place of sunrise at Hallowe’en (November 1), another from the same circle by the Barnhouse standing stone to the mid-winter sunrise at the solstice. Although the map gives these sight-lines, I shall show that they had not the use Mr. Spence attributes to them; but still observations of the sun were provided for on the days in question, and the circles and outstanding stones were undoubtedly set up to guide astronomical observations relating to the different times of the year. Of course, as I have shown elsewhere, such astronomical observations were always associated with religious celebrations of one kind or another, as the astronomer and the priest were one.