A similar trick was played by my mind about Stonehenge. As
a child I had stood in imagination before it, gazing up
awestruck on those stupendous stones or climbing and crawling
like a small beetle on them. And what at last did I see with
my physical eyes? Walking over the downs, miscalled a plain,
anticipating something tremendous, I finally got away from the
woods at Amesbury and spied the thing I sought before me far
away on the slope of a green down, and stood still and then
sat down in pure astonishment. Was this Stonehenge - this
cluster of poor little grey stones, looking in the distance
like a small flock of sheep or goats grazing on that immense
down! How incredibly insignificant it appeared to me, dwarfed
by its surroundings - woods and groves and farmhouses, and by
the vast extent of rolling down country visible at that point.
It was only when I had recovered from the first shock, when I
had got to the very place and stood among the stones, that I
began to experience something of the feeling appropriate to
the occasion.
The feeling, however, must have been very slight, since it
permitted me to become interested in the appearance and
actions of a few sparrows inhabiting the temple. The common
sparrow is parasitical on man, consequently but rarely found
at any distance from human habitations, and it seemed a little
strange to find them at home at Stonehenge on the open plain.
They were very active carrying up straws and feathers to the
crevices on the trioliths where the massive imposts rest on
the upright stones. I noticed the birds because of their
bright appearance: they were lighter coloured than any
sparrows I have ever seen, and one cock bird when flying to
and fro in the sunlight looked almost white. I formed the
idea that this small colony of about a dozen birds had been
long established at that place, and that the change in their
colouring was a direct result of the unusual conditions in
which they existed, where there was no shade and shelter of
trees and bushes, and they were perpetually exposed for
generations to the full light of the wide open sky.
On revisiting Stonehenge after an interval of some years I
looked for my sparrows and failed to find them. It was at the
breeding-season, when they would have been there had they
still existed. No doubt the little colony had been extirpated
by a sparrow-hawk or by the human guardians of "The Stones,"
as the temple is called by the natives.
It remains to tell of my latest visit to "The Stones." I had
resolved to go once in my life with the current or crowd to
see the sun rise on the morning of the longest day at that
place.
