NATURE 



[Mar. 14, 1872 



suggested many of them having been originally used as 

 dwelling places, and converted subsequently into tombs. 

 Fig xi., for instance, represents the chamber of a tumulus 

 near St. Helier, in Jersey. Here we have the central 

 room, with partitions, and the passage leading to the door. 

 In some few cases the dead have been found sitting 

 round the sepulchral chamber, with their arms and imple- 

 ments by their side, just as they may be supposed to have 

 sat during life. Fig. 5 represents the chamber of a 

 tumulus at Uby in Denmark. Stonehenge itself (Fig. S) 

 seems to be constructed on the same model: the mound, 

 however, being absent, or only represented by the en- 

 circling ring of earth. 



In determining the date of particular tumuli, Mr. Fer- 

 gusson seems to me to attach too much importance to 

 objects found on, or near the surface, and which often 

 have no doubt been accidentally dropped, or belong to 

 secondary interments. Thus he refers to the two objects 

 of iron found at Gib Hill, as if they justified us in ascrib- 

 ing that interesting tumulus to the iron age. But Mr. Bate- 

 man, by whom that mound was opened, expressly states that 

 the objects of iron were not found in the central cist, but 

 they belonged to a secondary interment. They throw, 

 therefore, no more light on the date of Gib Hill itself 

 than the fragments of ginger-beer bottles which abound 



in the area of Stonehenge do on the period to which it 

 belongs. This is a consideration which is of great im- 

 portance ; because the history of these megalithic monu- 

 ments, the race by whom, and the date at which they 

 were constructed, are most interesting questions of 

 archa:ology. Although few now regard Stonehenge as a 

 Druidical temple, still archa;ologists are almost unani- 

 mous in regarding it as very ancient ; while the class of 

 megalithic monuments they consider to have begun in 

 pre-historic times, and to have continued in out-of-the- 

 way parts down to a comparatively recent period. Mr. 

 Fergusson, on the contrary, is of a different opinion. He 

 endeavours to show that these monuments belong to one 

 period, and to comparatively recent times : — 



" However this may be," he says, " I trust that this 

 work may lay claim to being, in one respect at least, a 

 contribution to the cause of truth regarding the much- 

 disputed age and use of these rude stone monuments. It 

 states distinctly, and without reserve, one view of the 

 mooted question, and so openly, that any one who knows 

 better can at once pull away the prop from my house of 

 cards and level it with the ground. If one thing comes 

 out more clearly than another in the course of this investi- 

 gation, it is that the style of architecture to which these 

 monuments belong is a style, like Gothic, Grecian, Egyp- 



FiG. 7- — Dolmen at Pullicondah. 



tian, Budhist, or any other. It has a beginning, and 

 middle, and an end ; and though we cannot yet make 

 out the sequence in all its details, this at least seems clear 

 — that there is no great hiatus ; nor is it that one part is 

 pre-historic, while the other belongs to historic times. 

 All belong to the one epoch or the other. Either it is 

 that Stonehenge and Avebury, and all such, are the 

 temples of a race so ancient as to be beyond the ken of 

 mortal men, or they are the sepulchral monument of a 

 people who lived so nearly within the limits of the true 

 historic times that their story can easily be recovered." 



As already mentioned, the latter is Mr. Fergusson's 

 view. Almost alone among English archaeologists, he 

 considers that Stonehenge is part Roman, and believes it 

 to have been erected by Ambrosius, between the years 466 

 and 470 A.D., in memory of the British chiefs treache- 

 rously slain a fev; years previously. This theory I have 

 discussed in " Pre-historic Times," and, as I have little to 

 alter in, or add to, what is there said, I will not here 

 repeat my arguments. 



As regai ds Abury, the second in importance — if, in- 

 deed, it be the second and not the first of these monuments 



Mr. Fergusson says : — " I feel no doubt that it will come 

 eventually to be acknowledged that those who fell in 

 Arthur's twelfth and greatest battle were buried in the 

 ring at Avebury, and that those who survived raised these 



stones and the mound at Silbury, in the vain hope that 

 they would convey to their latest posterity the memory of 

 their prowess '' (p. 89). In fact, Mr. Fergusson refers to 

 this period all the similar monuments in England, a con- 

 clusion which seems to me in itself most improbable, and 

 which becomes still more so if we consider the similar 

 remains of other countries. The Irish examples he con- 

 siders to be somewhat earlier ; the Moytura remains, for 

 instance, being perhaps as early as the first century B.C. 

 As regards the North, he regards the celebrated tumulus 

 of Maes Howe as probably the "tomb of Havard, or of 

 some other of the Pagan Norwegian Jarls of Orkney ;" 

 while the Stones of Stennis can hardly, he thinks, "be 

 carried back beyond the year 800," to which period he 

 refers all the megalithic remains in those islands. In 

 short he regards these monuments, whether' in Britain, 

 Scandinavia, Germany, France, Spain, Algeria, or India, 

 as post-Christian in date, and in many cases not more 

 than a few hundred years old. Such a conclusion seems 

 to me entirely inconsistent with architectural history. 

 Thus in more than one case we know of early churches, 

 probably belonging to the loth or nth centuries, which 

 are constructed over dolmens. 



Mr. Fergusson admits that the great tumulus near 

 Sardis (Fig. I, p. 31) is rightly identified as the tomb of 

 Alyattes, was erected in the sixth century, B.C., and was 



