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known that a vast number has been totally destroyed by the 
peasantry, there is reason to believe that the collection 
could not have been originally much less than double that 
number. They are all formed of granite bolders, except the 
covering stone and another of the Cromlech in the great 
cairn, which are of lime stone. 
In all the circles, which have been either wholly or in 
part destroyed, human bones, earthen urns, &c. have been 
invariably found; and one circular enclosure, outside the 
group, and of far greater extent than any of the others, but 
evidently of cotemporaneous construction, is filled with 
bones of men and animals. 
Mr. Petrie stated, that this is the largest collection of 
monuments of the kind in the British islands, and probably, 
with the exception of the monuments at Carnach in Brittany, 
the most remarkable in the world. 
From the design observable in their arrangement and 
uniformity of construction, he considers them all of cotem- 
poraneous age; and from the human remains found in all 
of them, he concludes that they are wholly of sepulchral 
origin, and erected as monuments to men of various degrees 
of rank slain in a battle, the great central cairn being the 
sepulchre of the chief, and the great enclosure outside the 
group, the burial place of the inferior class. Such monu- 
ments, he stated, are found on all the battle fields recorded 
in Irish history, as the scenes of contest between the Belgian 
or Firvolg and the Tuatha de Danann colonies, and he con- 
siders these monuments to be the tombs of the Belgians, 
who, after their defeat in the battle of the Southern Moy- 
Turey, had retreated to Cuil-Iorra, and were there again 
defeated, and their king, Eochy, slain in crossing the strand 
of Ballysadare Bay, on which a cairn, rising above high 
water, still marks the spot on which he fell. 
As monuments of this class are found not only in most 
countries of Europe, but also in the East, Mr. Petrie thinks 
