the Somersetshire example, but that might easily have disappeared, and there is one at Avebury. Some of tliese coincidences may, of course, be accidental, but they are too numerous and too exact to be wholly so. If at all admitted, they seem to force us to one of two conclusions: either the time which elapsed between the ages of the two monuments is less than the previous reasoning would lead us to suppose, or the persistence in these forms, when once adopted, was greater than, on other grounds, it seems reasonable to expect. Three or four centuries seem a long time to have elapsed between buildings, the style of which is so nearly identical. If, however, their dates are to be brought nearer to one another, it seems much more reasonable to bring Stanton Drew down, than to carry Stennis back. It is much more consistent with what we know, to believe that Stanton Drew was erected by Hubba and his Danes, than that the Orkney circles and Maes-Howe could have been the work of the wretched Pape and Peti, who inhabited the island before the invasion of the Northmen.
As this is the last of the great groups containing first-class circles, which we shall have to deal with in the following pages, it may be well to try and sum up, in as few words as possible, the points of the evidence from which we arrive at the conclusion that it may be of the date above assigned to it:—
1. History is absolutely silent either for or against this theory. In so far as the litera scripta is concerned, it may either have been erected by the Phœnicians or in the time of the Stuarts.
2. The Danish theory is of no avail. No flint, bone, or bronze or iron implements have been found in a position to throw any light on its age.
3. There are in the islands some thousands of small mole-hill barrows—insignificant, stoneless, unadorned.
4. All parts of the Stennis group show design and power, and produce an effect of magnificence.
5. It seems evident that the circles and the barrows belong to two different peoples.
6. If so, the barrows belong to the Peti and Pape; the large howes and the stone monuments to the Northmen.
7. If this is so, the latter belong to the two centuries comprised between 800 and 1000 A.D.
