102 SOME NOTES ON ARBOR LOW. 
may regard a perfect megalithic interment as having consisted of 
a stone chamber, communicating with the outside by a passage, 
covered with a mound of earth, surrounded and supported at the 
circumference by a circle of stones, and in some cases surmounted 
by a stone pillar or ‘menhir.’ Sometimes, however, we find the 
central chamber standing alone, as at Kits Coty House, near 
Maidstone, which may or may not have been covered by a 
mound ; sometimes, especially of course where stones were scarce, 
we find the earth and the mound alone, sometimes only the 
menhir. The celebrated stone avenues of Carnac, in Brittany, 
and the stone rows of Abury, may, I think, have been highly 
developed specimens of the entrance passage ; in Stonehenge and 
many other instances we have the stone circle. In fact, these 
different parts of the perfect monument are found in’every com- 
bination, and in every degree of development, from the slight 
elevation scarcely perceptible to the eye—excepting perhaps when 
it is thrown into relief by the slanting rays of the setting sun— 
to the gigantic hill of Silbury ; from the small stone circle to the 
stupendous monuments of Stonehenge or Abury. . . . Now, 
the natural question will arise, when was this monument erected, 
and I can but give the simple answer, I do not know. Only last 
week I was opening a barrow in Wiltshire with one of our best 
archeologists, Mr. Cunnington ; he was asked the same question. 
‘I do not know,’ he said; ‘nobody does know, and nobody 
ever will know.’ I should not like to go so far as that, why 
should we despair? When Bruce asked his negro guide what 
became of the sun at night, the man said that it was no use 
troubling ourselves about questions which were beyond the range 
of human intellect. More recently, Caunt laid it down as an 
axiom that we could ascertain nothing about the heavenly bodies 
excepting their mass and movement, yet he was scarcely dead 
before we had analaysed the very stars. I fully hope, then, that 
one day this question also may be answered. But if we cannot 
reply in terms of years. still, some answer, I think, may be given.” 
In a book published in 1880 by Mr. Kains Jackson on ancient 
