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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Dolmen, near Carnac, Brittany. 



of battle, but why so many were needed to overcome one poor saint 

 is not stated. Old customs and superstitions cling long to a rude un- 

 cultured people. They change slowly. While accepting the new ideas 

 or religion, they do not give up the old. Both may flourish side by side. 



Some of the stone monuments of Brittany were probably reared or 

 constructed .as late as the christian era. As late as the time of Gregory 

 of Tours, the worship of stone monuments was still so prevalent as to 

 call forth an edict of the church putting under a ban all who persisted 

 in still adhering to it, while in some of the remote valleys of the 

 Pyrenees, according to some of the best authorities, the Avorship of 

 stone exists at the present day. 



There seems to be considerable evidence that the people who built 

 Stonehenge and Avebury and erected the menhirs and alignments of 

 Brittany were sun-worshipers, and while a monolith or megalithic 

 monument may have been regarded with veneration and worshipped 

 itself, originally it was simply the symbol and representative of some- 

 thing greater. These customs would not die out easily among a rude 

 clannish people even after the introduction of Christianity, and fur- 

 thermore, we are all sun-worshipers more or less. 



The age of these marvelous and mysterious monuments can not be 

 told in years, but in a more general way. They are not all of the same 

 age; some date as far back as the Neolithic period, many belong to 

 the age of bronze, while others are as recent as the christian era. Since 



