Wichita, Kansas. October 11, 2009.

That Diodorus’s Temple of the Sun in Great Britain was Stonehenge, seems to deserve credit; and that the Druids were astronomers, is authenticated by Cæsar. It may therefore be true, that the position of stones in a ring had an astronomical allusion.

In the work before us, p. 48, an account is given of two ancient cycles, the Metonick and the Neros, alluding to the movements of the Sun and Moon in their cycles of nineteen and six hundred years. Josephus has affirmed that the cycle of 600 years was the invention of the antediluvians. This must have come to him by tradition from the Patriarchs, and was probably well known to Abraham and the Druids. The cycle of Neros is formed by 7,421 lunar revolutions of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 min. 3 seconds, which make 219,146 and a half, give six hundred solar years of 365 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes, 36 seconds each, which differs less than 3 minutes from what its length is observed to be at this day. Now Ptolemy and Hipparchus made the year to be 365 days, 5 hours, 55 minutes, 12 seconds.—Supposing this cycle were correct to a second, if on the first of January at noon a new Moon took place, it would take place again in exactly six hundred years, at the same moment of the day, and under all the same circumstance. …

Here then we have two cycles, viz. the Metonic or 19 years, the Neros, 600. Add to these, the cycle of Vrihaspate, 60 years; oriental van, 144; another van, 180; and the sacred name of Sol, which was ΦPH, the number of which make 608 in the Coptic … Furthermore, the Welsh world for Stonehenge, Gwaith Emrys or Emreis, as it is often written, the structure of the Revolution, signifies in the Celtic or Greek numerals 365, viz. η 8, μ 40, ξ 100, η 8, ι 10, σ 20, = 366. Thus it finished in the same way, that they as well as the ancient Gauls, called the week eight nights, but 7 days, 366 nights, but 365 days. Meithra also numerally stands for 365.

Excerpted from ‘Review – The Celtic Druids,’ appearing in Gentleman’s Magazine: And Historical Chronicle, Volume XCVII. Published by J.B. Nichols of 25 Parliament Street, London, 1827.