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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of efforts made at different times to Christianize them. The Chris- 

 tians were satisfied at first to scratch rude crosses upon their faces. 

 Sometimes, however, more regularity was first given to their 



shapes by rounding off their 

 tops or marking rough pan- 

 els on them, and adding to 

 the cross other figures and 

 inscriptions. Many monu- 

 ments thus treated may be 

 found in Morbihan. The 

 crosses cut upon these 

 stones, particularly in Brit- 

 tany, generally have the 

 four branches equal. They 

 are Maltese crosses, fur- 

 nished with feet or braces 

 at the bottom, of very an- 

 cient forms — some seeming 

 to be earlier than of the 

 ninth century, and possibly- 

 with their ornaments too, 

 dating from the Merovin- 

 gian period. Some men- 

 hirs have been cut so as to 

 give them a more or less regular form of a cross, and have curious 

 designs sculptured in their faces in intaglio or relief, of certainly 

 ■quite as remote an epoch. 



More frequently a cross has simply been planted on a monolith, 

 and instances of the kind are not rare in France. Of these, a cross 

 on the Great Stone at La Rigandiere, in the commune of Tour-Landy, 

 (Maine-et-Loire), was erected as recently as 1862. These crosses 

 are of stone or wood; a large wooden cross with a Christ on the 

 Pierre de Champs Dolent — a regularly shaped stone more than 

 twenty feet high — has been renewed several times. A number of men- 

 hirs dedicated to the Virgin or to saints have been adorned with statues. 

 A menhir in the Isle of Hoedic, Morbihan, thirteen feet high, which 

 has become an object of pilgrimage, has a niche hollowed in one of 

 its faces to accommodate a statue of the Virgin. The Pierre Fritte, 

 in the department of Maine-et-Loire, has a niche containing an 

 ancient statue of the Virgin in painted faience, inclosed with an 

 iron grating. A large painted wooden statue representing St. Peter, 

 patron of the parish, was placed in 1878 on a granite block twenty- 

 £ve feet high, in the parish of Pedernec. In the same department of 

 -Cotes-du-lSrord is a stone picturesquely decorated with a wooden 



i. — Plan of the Dolmen of the 

 Seven Saints. Scale, 1 to 100. A, altar; C, open- 

 work partition ; E, ventilator ; P, entrance door to 

 the dolmen ; S', S^, S^, supports ; T', T^, tables. 



