202 VIGNETTES FROM NATURE. 



that even if the ice had not swept away every 

 trace of them, as it has now swept over the 

 whole face of Greenland, we should still have 

 few monuments of such early date save only 

 the angular hatchets of the drift and the 

 shapelier bone harpoons of the whale hunting 

 cave-men. 



Originally, this cromlech must have been 

 covered with a barrow. It formed, indeed, 

 the central chamber of a neolithic tomb ; and 

 over it the earth was once heaped up in a 

 great and conspicuous pile. In England, as 

 a rule, the barrows still survive, especially in 

 all the south-eastern plain and the lesser hills 

 or downs. But in Wales and Cornwall, and 

 in the more mountainous regions generally, 

 where soil is scanty and denuding agents act 

 more rapidly, the barrows have oftener been 

 washed away by rain and torrents or slowly 

 crumbled down by sun and wind. That, no 

 doubt, is pardy the reason why people 

 generally believe that * Druidical remains,' 

 as they choose to call them, are specially 



