450 The Amorpholithic Monuments of Brittany. (October, 
a Vabri du vent;” and the Comte de Caylus takes the trouble 
to produce a quantity of evidence that the Romans were not 
in the habit of encamping in such order. M. Mahé attributes 
all the megalithic monuments to the Hebrews and Greeks; 
whilst M. de Penhouet finds an identity between the name 
of Carnac in Brittany and Karnac at Thebes in Egypt; the 
same theorist also finds the Bas-Breton language as now 
spoken to be of a pure Phoenician origin. Dr. John 
Bathurst Deane saw here a temple in the form of an 
enormous serpent. This not very satisfactory hypothesis 
at one time found a supporter in Dr. Thurnam, who has, 
however, now given up this ophite or dracontium theory as 
untenable. At one time, indeed, such a reliable antiquary 
as Canon Jackson,* of Salisbury, believed in this ingenious 
invention of the highly-imaginative Stukeley. M.de Cambry 
would have the lines of Carnac to form an enormous 
astronomical calender (‘‘un théme céleste, un zodiaque’’), 
each line representing a sign, of which the ancient Gauls 
only (according to this theorist) recognised eleven; whilst 
others would have these and similar structures to be con- 
neéted with astronomical observations; take, for instance, 
the following work published at Salisbury in 1771, entitled 
“Choir Gaur; the Grand Orrery of the Ancient Druids 
commonly called Stonehenge, astronomically explained and 
mathematically proved to be a Temple erected in the earliest 
ages for observing the motions of the Heavenly Bodies.” 
Another astronomer (?), anonymous, by abstruse calculations 
backwards, ascertained that about 2000 years ago an occulta- 
tion of one of the planets (also anonymous), must have taken 
place at such a point in the heavens as would have enabled 
* ‘Tn England of course attempts to solve the riddle of Carnac have not 
been lacking. One which has attracted much attention and support is, that 
it was a temple in the form of a serpent—a kind of building which (so the 
propounders of this doctrine told us) ‘the serpent worshippers or ‘ Ophites’ 
used to construdt, and to which they gave the name of ‘Dracontium.’”’ A great 
deal of ingenuity and learning has been brought to bear upon this theory. I 
myself, ‘‘ faute de mieux,” used rather to acquiesce in it, depending wholly 
and entirely, as I did, upon the deliberate statements of its champions, that 
such structures were made, and that ‘‘the ancients gave to them the name of 
Dracontium.” Waving never met in the course of my own limited classical 
reading with any thing or name of the kind, and beginning to wonder where 
any notice of it was to be found, I consulted one of the first Greek scholars 
of our day. He shook his head, and added that a Greek word with that 
meaning was to him unknown. I ransacked lexicon after lexicon, but no 
“« serpent-temple,” called by the ancients a Dracontium, was to be found. On 
further investigation it came to light that the word ‘‘ Dracontium” was actually 
coined by an ingenious but rather extravagant antiquary, Dr. Stukely, as a 
name very suitable and convenient for a thing, which thing was also a creation 
of his own brain. Upon making this discovery I took leave of the Ophites.— 
Notes and Queries, 4th Series, Vol. iv., p. 3. 
