THE QUARTERLY 
TOURNAL OF) SCIENCE. 
JANUARY, 1872. 
I. THE DOLMEN-MOUNDS AND AMORPHOLITHIC 
MONUMENTS OF BRITTANY. 
By S. P. OLiver, Capt. Royal Artillery, F.R.G.S., 
Corresponding Member of the Anthropological Institute. 
PATE Ie 
The Dolmen Mounds of Brittany ; their History and Analogues. 
f HE study of prehistoric archeology has now become a 
recognised branch of accurate if not exact science, by 
which valuable assistance is rendered towards the 
elucidation of many problems of universal interest in philo- 
sophy as well as ethnology. It increases our knowledge of 
the progress of human thought as exhibited by the habits, 
occupations, and arts of primitive man, whilst it also 
furnishes a clue to the intricate currents of the tide of 
ethnic migration; the first.is supplemented by comparison 
with analogous modes of life, still found in existence amongst 
tribes of modern savages, whilst the latter throws light upon 
the primeval relationship of peoples, whose descendants are 
at present separated by broad intervening obstacles, whether 
seas, deserts, or other races of foreign stock. 
Brittany offers to the ethnologist an unusually wide field 
for investigation in this direction; ‘‘ La clef de lV’ethnologie de 
la France est en Bretagne,” says Professor Broca, and the 
numberless megalithic remains to be found in this province, 
especially in the departments of Finistere and Morbihan, 
offer promising mines of research. Brittany may well be 
called ‘“‘La Terre des grands souvemrs.” Amongst these 
interesting monuments, M.de Freminville is a sure guide to 
their localities, as indeed he is to all the Breton antiquities, 
which he has made his especial study. 
M. de Freminville divides the megalithic (sometimes 
wrongly termed cyclopean) remains under three heads :— 
I. Religious; 2. Sepulchral; and 3. Memorial; and he 
attributes them all to Celtic construction. 
VOL. IX. (0.S.)—VOL. II. (N.S.) B 
