Idolatry and Philosophy of the Zabians. 215 
rous other places, they still exist, but it is inthe Scottish islands, the 
Orkneys, at Classirniss, and various other places, that they are found 
in the finest preservation. In France, and on the continent, they 
_ are to be met with, and we may suppose they were used for the same 
purposes in Europe as in Asia. 
In the British islands, single pillars called by antiquarians Lithoi 
are found. * There are in the Highlands of Scotland and in the 
adjacent isles, numerous obelisks, or stones set up on end, some thir- 
ty, some twenty four feet high, and this sometimes where no such 
Stones are to be found; Wales being likewise full of them, and some 
there are in the least cultivated parts of Britain, with very many in 
Ireland. In most places of this last kingdom, the common people 
believe these obelisks to be men transformed into stone by the magic 
of the Druids. This is also the notion of the vulgar in Oxfordshire 
of the rollright stones, and in Cornwall of the Hurlers, erect stones, 
so called, but belonging to a different class from the obelisks of which 
I now discourse. That obelisk if I may so call it, in the parish of 
Braras, in the island of Lewis in Scotland, called the Thrushel stone, 
is very remarkable, being not only above twenty feet high, which is 
yet surpassed by many others, but likewise almost as much in 
breadth, which no other comes near.” In Penrith churchyard there 
are two of these Lithoi; but one at Poitiers in France exceeds all 
that there are in England, being sixty feet in circumference, and 
raised wpon the tops of five others, though this belongs to the kind 
of obelisks called Cromleachs. ‘Travellers still bring from Egypt 
pillars of this kind, with hieroglyphic dedications to the sun. The 
Bacchus of the Thebans was a pillar. The god of the Arabians is 
reported by Maximus Tyrius to have been a square block of stone ; 
such likewise was the first Jupiter of the Romans, who was carefully 
concealed by the priesthood from the people. It was said to have 
been brought from ancient Troy, where it once stood as the famous 
Palladium. 
With respect to these large masses of stone, which are so plenti- 
fully scattered over the British islands, although antiquarians unani- 
mously ascribe them to human agency, yet geologists have suspected 
that they gained their present position by the action of strong cur- 
tents of water.t They likewise theoretically account for the forma- 
tion of Lagan or Tottering stones, from the chemical action of the 
* Hist. of Druids. 
+ No well instructed geologist would now form this conclusion.—Ed. 
