8 FOSSIL MEN, 



Wilson may furnish us with a specimen of a monu- 

 ment of this period, which is everywhere in Europe 

 known to us only by monuments, and not by written 

 history. It is the mount called Knock Maraidhe, or 

 Hill of the Sailors or Sea-rovers, standing till 1838 

 in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, in the midst of modern 

 civilisation. It was of no mean size, being fifteen feet 

 high, and one hundred and twenty in diameter, but no 

 history tells its origin or the cause of its name. It 

 had to be levelled, and then it appeared that it had 

 been built by human hands. Under the centre was a 

 massive stone tomb, or cromlech, holding the remains 

 of two male skeletons in a sitting or crouching 

 posture, and other bones, possibly of a dog. Shells of 

 the common Littorina, perforated for stringing, lay 

 beside the skulls, and a stone arrow-head and a pin 

 or hair-support of bone. Around the margin of the 

 tumulus were stone cists, each containing a small vase 

 and calcined bones, the remains of offerings to the 

 dead. This, as we shall see in the sequel, is an almost 

 precise counterpart of some of the oldest American 

 interments in those remarkable mounds of the river 

 valleys of the West, which, though some of them 

 are of great antiquity, undoubtedly represent a mode 

 of burial pursued up to the time of the European 

 discovery. 



Here is another picture. It is a " Gallery grave " 

 in Sweden, as described by Nilsson. The walls con- 

 sist of flat slabs of granite or gneiss, carefully joined 

 together, forming a chamber from twenty to thirty 



