June rising, Line from Barnstone over Maeshowe tumulus. December rising, tumulus (Az. 41°) on Ward Hill. December setting, tumulus Onston 36° 30′. It is not a little remarkable that the summer solstice rising and the winter solstice rising and setting seem to have been provided for at the Stenness circle by alignment on the centres of tumuli, two of them, across the Loch, one the Onston tumulus to the S.W. (Az. 36° 30′), the other tumulus being on Ward Hill to the S.E., Az. 41° (rough measurement). If the Maeshowe tumulus was a structure erected at the time I have suggested to use the Barnstone for the summer solstice rising; then these two other tumuli, to deal with the winter solstice at Stenness circle, may have been built at the same time. All these provided for a new cult. There are also tumuli near the line (which cannot be exactly determined because the heights of the hills are unknown) of the summer solstice setting; none was required for the sunrise at this date, as the line passes over the highest point of Hindera fiold, a natural tumulus more than 500 feet high, and on that account a triangulation station. Another argument in favour of the tumuli being additions to the original design is that the place of the _November_ setting from the Stenness circle is marked, _not_ by a tumulus, but by a standing stone. As this stone, near Deepdale, and the tumulus at Onston are only about 1200 yards apart, the suggestion may be made that under certain unknown conditions and possibly in later times tumuli in some cases replaced stones as collimation marks. With regard to the clock-star, it is to be feared that the stones in the N.E. quadrant as viewed from the circle which might have given us a clue have been removed. As the latitude of Stenness is N. 59°, some star with a less declination than N. 31° would have been chosen, assuming that the sky-line towards the N. point is not very high. [20] See especially _Nature_, July 2, 1891, p. 201. [21] Gardner: Paisley and London. CHAPTER XIV THE HURLERS (Lat. 50° 31′ N.) The sight-lines to which I have drawn attention in relation to the stones of Stenness had to do with the places of sunrise and sunset in the May and Solstitial years. I now pass to another group of circles in which we deal chiefly with the places of star-rise and star-set, some of the stars being used as warners for sunrise at the critical times of the two years in question. Following the clue given me in the case of the Egyptian temples, such as Luxor, by successive small changes of the axis necessitated by the change in a star’s place due to precession, I began this stellar branch of the inquiry by looking out for this peculiarity in an examination of many maps and plans of circles.