Stone Monuments of Brittany. 29 
represented at the present day by the Basques of Spain, by the 
people of South Wales, called by the Romans Silures, and by 
the people of the extreme West of Ireland, who are alluded to 
in Erse literature as Firbolgs, the race who were there before 
the coming of the Milesians, a short dark non-Aryan people, who 
form a large proportion of those peoples of Western Europe 
called Celtic. The Celts themselves came through Central Europe 
in at least three distinct waves of immigration, and brought with 
them the use of bronze for weapons and tools, and at the time 
they came into contact with the Romans had attained the use 
of iron, for we are told that the Gauls had long iron swords, 
which bent in fighting and had to be straightened again. 
Where bronze or iron have been found associated with the 
dolmens or menhirs, there have -been indications of later work, 
. in the form of secondary interments, or of intrenchments, camps, 
or buildings, placed amongst the menhirs long subsequent to 
their first erection. 
It will be seen that these megalithic remains of the Stone Age 
open for us a vista of remote antiquity, and suggest many ques- 
tions of profound interest relative to the spread and development 
of the human race, and the changes in the physical conditions 
of the earth’s surface. 
On the table are some stone implements from Brittany. Most 
of them were found in the districts round Lamballe and Dinant 
by the peasants in cultivating the fields, and are made of a 
diorite, very hard and tough, of a dark grey colour when freshly 
broken, but turning brown by weathering, as will be seen by the 
specimen of natural rock; a few are of flint. There is no true 
flint in the country, so it must have been brought from a long 
distance. The smaller specimens are mostly of jadeite, and a 
stone called by the French “ tirholite.’” The locality from 
whence this stone was procured seems doubtful, but it is said 
that a thin vein of jadeite has been found:on the sea-coast. 
There are also some bronze weapons found in the fields, and 
some stone amulets bored for suspension, also three polishing 
stones for smoothing the skins used for clothing. Some of the 
small celts in the museums have holes bored in them, and one 
of these has evidently been begun, for the commencement of a 
drill hoie is on one side of it. The small celts on the table were 
collected by a resident in Brittany, and I believe were found in 
dolmens. 
