XXXVII. 



ON THE STKUCTUEE OF BOUND AND 

 LONG BARKOWS. 



Professor Rolleston read papers to the British Association, 

 September, 1880, On the Str2icture of Round and Long Barrows y his 

 remarks being illustrated by a number of diagrams. Premising 

 that one of his objects was to preserve barrows from being spoilt, 

 and thus to prevent the destruction of certain links in the history 

 of our species, he described the construction of barrows which he 

 had explored, and urged the absolute necessity of very great care 

 being exercised in such exploration. Speaking of urn burials in 

 round barrows, he briefly referred to the question of the cremation 

 of bodies, and the idea of it. Why did the people burn their dead ? 

 He believed the idea was this — that all savage races, when they 

 had to deal with an enemy, were exceedingly prone to wreak 

 certain ignominies on dead bodies. Burning the bodies put it 

 right out of the power of the enemy to do this, and the urn 

 enabled people to carry away their friends who were so burnt. 

 In time of pestilence it became actually necessary for sanitary 

 considerations to burn the dead, and it was only in time of plague 

 or war that we found that cremation or burning became the order 

 of the day, and that was readily explicable by the fact that men 

 always did what they could on the principle of least action, because 

 burning was a troublesome process. Any universality of burning 

 was explained by the fact that ancient history was simply one great 

 catalogue of plague, and pestilence, and war, and the like. Of 

 course he was an enemy to cremation, because it did a great deal 

 of harm, preventing us from knowing what sort of people our pre- 

 decessors were. Professor RoUeston chronicled the finding in a 



