ROUGH STONE MONUMENTS 



wall of stone blocks 2 or 3 feet high. The cairn 

 originally covered a circular stone chamber 12 J 

 feet in diameter entered by a straight passage 

 on its south-west side. In other words, the In- 

 verness monuments are simply chamber-tombs 

 covered with a cairn and surrounded by a circle. 



Around Aberdeen we find the third type of 

 circle. It consists of a cist-tomb covered by a 

 low mound, often with a retaining wall of small 

 blocks, but there is no entrance passage leading 

 into the cist. Outside the whole is a circle of 

 large upright blocks with this peculiarity, that 

 between the two highest — generally to the south 

 or slightly east of south — lies a long block on its 

 side, occupying the whole interval between them. 

 The uprights nearest this ' recumbent ' block are 

 the tallest in the circle, and the size of the rest 

 decreases towards the north. Of thirty circles 

 known near Aberdeen twenty-six still possess the 

 ' recumbent ' stone, and in others it may originally 

 have existed. 



Passing now to monuments of more definitely 

 sepulchral type we find that the dolmen is not 

 frequent in Scotland, though several are known 

 in the lowlands and in part of Argyllshire. 



To the long barrows of England answer in part 

 at least the chambered cairns of Caithness and 

 the Orkneys. The best known type is a long 

 rectangular horned cairn (Fig. 4), of which there 



38 



