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your attention to this subject it is not intended to impose tlie 

 lugubrious suggestion in the Hnes — "Let's talk of graves, of 

 worms, of epitaphs," but the broader, brighter and more inspiring 

 suggestion in the lines of Volney ' ' In the inmost recesses of 

 sepulchres I will invoke the spirit which gave splendour to states 

 and gloiy to their people." Many may ask "Can these rude 

 mounds yield all this ? " It is not too much to say that they 

 have told us almost all that we know of the origin, the dispersal 

 and the general history of the most ancient peoples. Seme of 

 them long departed arc without a mark except in tlie chambers 

 of their dead. There are many of these memorials which for 

 ages have stood in " silent uncommunicative majesty" that have 

 now yielded up their secrets and speak plainly of the state of the 

 primitive arts, of the manners and customs, the habits of life, 

 the social relationships, the physical characteristics and even of 

 the early phases of religion amongst the people who reared them. 

 Though mounds and cairns, cists and urns are scattered all over 

 the face of the earth, we shall so far as possible confine our 

 attention to the antiquities of the British Isles. Professor Evans 

 says " there is not a tittle of evidence to show that PaliBolithic 

 man practised any form of sepulture " — they appear to have 

 absolutely neglected their dead. This is the mofe to be believed 

 as the Eskimos, their truest modern representatives, still display 

 an indifference in disposing of the departed which greatly shocks 

 the European mind. In the Neolithic Age, however, we have 

 evidences of a very careful bestowal of human remains — and a 

 good many of the long barrows and chambered barrows found in 

 our country are assigned to this period. Some antiquarians con- 

 tend that many of the chambers of the dead both in natural caves 

 and artificial barrows were formerly abodes of the living — this 

 can be ]proved by reference again to the customs of the Eskimos 

 and it must strike everyone how closely the winter huts of these 

 people resemble our own Chambered Barrows. They are to be 

 entered only on the hands and knees, are oblong in form, are 

 divided into sleeping compartments, and the Greenlander sleeps 

 in the same attitude as the crouching skeletons discovered in 

 our Long Barrows. The same ring of stones will also be found 

 propping up the sides, which we see in many cases marking the 

 outer margin of the earth mounds in our own country. 



With respect to the theory of Dual Sepulture, it may be said 

 that on the summit of some of these barrows are dolmens or 

 rude stone chambers, and upon the ground-level others, called 

 " surface dolmens," having no apparent connection witli the 

 chambers within the mounds. The question is, "What is the 

 meaning of this free standing type of dolmen? " They are co- 

 existent with the neolithic barrows, and we may be sure, says 

 Dr. Evans, that primitive man never set a stone on end without 



