A HISTORY OF CORNWALL with Phallism, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Cornish stone circles may in part have owed their origin to some far away echo of this ancient worship. Questions of date and authorship are closely connected, and if we knew the one we could arrive at the other. Sir Norman Lockyer and Mr. W. Gowland have lately (1901) been exploring Stonehenge, and by different routes they have arrived at a very similar conclusion, viz. that Stonehenge may be dated from 2000 B.C. to 1680 B.C. Mr. Gowland considers it to be of late Neolithic Age, and explorations lately carried out at Arbor Low Circle, Derbyshire, have led to the belief that that monu- ment also dates from late Neolithic times. At Stonehenge the barrows around and at Arbor Low the barrow constructed out of the bank are of the Bronze Age, but the circles are thought to be earlier than this. It by no means follows that our stone circles are of the same age ; they may be earlier or they may be later ; we have, in fact, nothing to fix their date by except their relationship to the neighbouring huts and barrows. The round circles, the round huts, and the round barrows are, on the face of them, of the same period and that the Bronze Age, but this super- ficial resemblance may be illusory and the circles may be of an earlier, Neolithic Age. If the circles, huts, and barrows were contemporaneous, it follows that the men who lived in the huts and were buried in the barrows, almost certainly Celts, were also the authors of the stone circles. If however the circles are older, then their builders must have been of a pre-Celtic, primitive race. It is not impossible that, seeing how diverse are these monuments in this one county, some may have been the work of a Neolithic, pre-Celtic people, and others the work of the Celts, with, it may be, different objects and uses. What those objects were is, for all our speculations, still hidden. We shall perhaps agree with Dr. Borlase that ' it may with great probability be asserted that . . . having for the most part been dedi- cated to Religion, [they] naturally became afterwards the Curice and Fora of the same Community.' Or we may copy the caution of an earlier writer, Norden, and say : ' This monumente seemeth to importe an intention of the memoriall of some matter . . . thowgh time haue worne out the maner.' NOTE Since the above article was written Sir Norman Lockyer, K.C.B., F.R.S., has been investigating the position and surroundings of certain Cornish circles, and has traced ' sight- lines ' which are thought to have had reference to particular stars at remote periods ; articles on these researches have appeared in Nature, 19056, but as they are still more or less sub judice this brief mention will suffice. A committee of the British Association has, through Mr. St. George Gray of Taunton, recently pursued explorations at Stripple Stones, though so far without much result. 406
