i897-] Ci^oSB. — Granite Boulders in the S.E. of Dublin. 33 



it would seem not invariably, composed of boulders. Though 

 we sorely grudge that our grand Dalkey boulders should be 

 broken up by the building-contractors and made into prim 

 villas and terraces, often with odious fashionable Italian 

 names, yet I think we may agree more or less cordially to 

 some of them being appropriated by the cromlech-builders. 

 Those men prized them for their size, they did not destroy 

 them ; though possibly, in a few cases, they may have interfered 

 with their natural or geological interest. There can hardly 

 be any doubt that they have sometimes been the means of 

 preserving some of the finest boulders for us. Notwithstand- 

 ing that the ordinary Philistine would think nothing at all of 

 blasting to pieces an unusually large boulder, though it were 

 a most striking perched block, yet it is conceivable that he 

 might relent if he saw the boulder playing the part of the 

 covering-stone of a cromlech. The great probability is that 

 the top stone of the Brennanstown cromlech and that of the 

 Shanganagh cromlech escaped demolition in this way when 

 the surrounding ground was cleared as we now see it. 



I may here observe that the removal of the boulders frcm 

 the ground about a cromlech heightens the effect of the latter ; 

 it is however a factitious addition to the great interest that a 

 cromlech must always have for us. It makes some persons 

 imagine that the large covering-stone has been brought from 

 some distant spot, where there were boulders, to its present 

 position where none are now to be seen. But it is most reason- 

 able to think that the cromlech-builders looked about for the 

 largest boulder that they could find near enough to the desired 

 site of their monument, and collected the smaller supporting 

 stones around it, and then built their cromlech there. 



The boulders mentioned in this paper are all of granite and 

 rest on granite ground, except those at the western edge of 

 the granite alluded to above ; so that we have no means of 

 knowing how far they may have travelled from their native 

 site. 



