LFinJOCK'S PTTKinSTORTC TIMES. 519 



striictiiig the road from Morgan's Iliil had taken Silbury Hill as a 

 point to steer for, swerving only just before reaching it. Moreover, 

 the map will show that not only this Eonian road, but some others 

 in the same part of England, are less straight than is usually the 

 case. 



" Mr. Ferguson admits, in the passage just quoted, that the pieces 

 of the road, on the two sides of Silbury Hill, are not in the same 

 straight line, so that by his own showing, there must have been a 

 bend somewhere. On the whole, therefore, I quite agree with old 

 Stukeley, that the Eoman road curved abruptly southwards to avoid 

 Silbury Hill, and this shows Silbury Hill was ancienter than the 

 Koman road." 



The *' Stone age " to which our author devotes his next chapters 

 is that which preceded the invention of the use of metals. The 

 immense number of stone-implements found in all parts of the world, 

 sufficiently attest the extensive use of this material in former ages. 

 The celebrated Museum of Northern Antiquities in Copenhagen, 

 embraces some 10,000 specimens of this category; that of the Eoyal 

 Irish Academy at Dublin 2000, whilst the Museum at Stockholm is 

 estimated to contain between 15,000 and 16,000 similar objects. Our 

 knowledge of this period is principally derived from the following 

 sources — tumuli or burial-mounds, lake-habitations, such as those of 

 Switzerland, heaps of refuse such as the kitchen-middings of Den- 

 mark, and bone-caves, as those of the Dordogne in France. After a 

 general disquisition on the mode of manufacture, the different 

 varieties and the conjectured uses of stone instruments, our author 

 proceeds to describe the ancient burial-mounds from which so many 

 of them have been disinterred. In many parts of the world these 

 tumuli are extremely numerous. "In our own island they may 

 " be seen on almost every down; in the Orkneys alone, it is esti- 

 " mated that more than two thousand still remain ; and in Denmark 

 " they are even more abundant ; they are found all over Eiu-ope 

 " from the shores of the Atlantic to the Oural mountains ; in Asia 

 " they are scattered over the great steppes from the borders of 

 " Eussia to the Pacific Ocean, and from the plains of Siberia to 

 " those of Hindostan ; in America, we are told that they are to be 

 "numbered by thousands and tens of thousands; nor are they 

 " wanting in Africa, where the Pyramids themselves exhibit the most 

 " magnificent development of the same idea ; so that the whole 

 " world is studded with these burial-places of the dead." These 



