omc 
344 
had it at a time most singularly adapted to account for 
the outbreak in London. 
The description of the farm-yard itself has been given 
elsewhere; suffice it to say that the well really drained 
the premises, and there is little doubt but that the poison 
got into the water, which was so bad that it had long been 
condemned as unfit to drink. 
Hitherto epidemics of typhoid spread by means of milk 
have been attributed to the admixture of water as an adul- 
teration with it ; in this case no such suspicion arises, the 
milk was exceptionally rich, and was daily tested with 
sufficient accuracy to show adulteration with any but a 
small amount of water ; but the water from the well was 
conveyed to the dairy pump by a pipe, and was used for 
washing the dairy utensils, so that it is easy to account 
for the presence of a small amount in some of the 
“churns,” an amount, however, enough in so favourable 
a pabulum as milk to infect a very large quantity of it. 
The lesson to be drawn is that all dairy-farms must be 
subject to regular sanitary supervision, especially as to 
their water supply, that such details of arrangement with 
regard to the cleansing of the vessels as may seem to offer 
least chance of the possibility of mischief should be 
adopted, and that the presence of infectious disease 
among the ep/oyés should be noted at once, and the 
proper precautions, which are now well known, taken. 
W. H. CORFIELD 
DOLMEN-MOUNDS v. FREE-STANDING AND 
TRIPOD CROMLECHS 
R. W. COPELAND BORLASE, the talented author 
of “Nzenia Cornubiz,” in his communication to 
NATURE (vol. viii. p, 202), calls attention to the struc- 
ture of Lanyon Quoit as an undeniable example of a 
British tripod cromlech or free-standing dolmen, by way 
of “protest against the dzctwm of Mr, Lukis being ex- 
tended to our British examples, before a careful scrutiny 
has been made of every monument of the kind, from one 
corner of our isles to the other.” 
To my friend Mr. Borlase I owe my personal acquaint- 
ance with the numerous non-historic rude stone monu- 
ments in the Land’s End district ; and, as he is a life-long 
resident in the immediate vicinity of these interesting 
relics, to which I am a mere casual visitor, it is with 
feelings of great delicacy and diffidence that I now ven- 
ture to place in a somewhat different aspect the state- 
ments and conclusions which he would wish your readers 
to adopt. 
It were strange if Mr. Borlase did not turn out the best 
authority on early Cornish remains, for within six or 
seven miles of his residence at Castle Horneck (itself the 
site of an ancient Cornu-British encampment) there are 
at least twice as many dolmens as in all the rest of Eng- 
land; and though there may be perhaps as many in 
Anglesea, and twice as many in Wales, still West Corn- 
NATURE 
wall has an advantage over both these districts, viz., that 
in Wales and Anglesea, the country of the Silures, there 
are no circles but only dolmens; in Cornwall, as in the 
Isle of Man, there are both circles and dolmens, the re- 
sult, as Fergusson tells us, of an Ibero-Aquitanian admix- 
ture with Celtic and other (Scandinavian ?) blood in the 
inhabitants. (Vide “ Rude Stone Monuments,” p. 163.) 
Inheriting the tastes and following in the footsteps of 
his great-grandfather of antiquarian renown, Mr. Borlase 
has made great use of his opportunities, and is continu- 
ally adding to, or accumulating store of facts with re- 
gard to the ancient history of our country. On the other 
hand, most antiquarians will probably agree with me in 
Ps 
ar. we ee Wt he ES Mame OVP aS = ba a a igi 
V8 fA «ape Nae a 
maintaining that the Lukis family may be reckoned some 
of the best, if not the very best authorities, on the cham- 
bered barrows of France and the Channel Islands, 
Enormous numbers of these structures have been scien- 
tifically examined and exhaustively described by the 
Messrs. Lukis : and the Rev. W. Lukis, in company with 
Sir Henry Dryden, is now employed in drawing to scale 
plans and elevations of the Isle of Man remains, and 
thereby carrying out his share of that scrutiny which Mr, 
Borlase anxiously demands in his letter. 
When such authorities disagree, it would seem almost 
impertinent to interfere ; but knowing my friend Mr, W. 
Lukis to be busily engaged in the Isle of Man, and too 
far off to personally examine the monument in dispute, 
whilst I was within a three hours’ journey of the structure 
I determined to see the cromlech myself, and having 
done so, cannot allow Mr. Borlase’s letter to remain un- 
challenged. 
In taking up the cudgels for Mr. Fergusson, Mr. Bor- 
lase must not be looked upon as an implicit follower of 
that author, whose work he characterises as “ umre- 
liable,’* although, with him he is convinced “that the 
barrows and. the cromlechs (if not the circles too) were 
the sepulchres of the dwellers in the hut circles and the 
earthworks ; and that these Jatter were the residences of 
the Romanised Britons in the earlier centuries of the 
Christian era ;” for before the appearance of “‘ Rude Stone 
Monuments,” he struck out for himself the formation of 
“a small class or species of dolmen,” viz. the tripod 
cromlech, or dolmen proper (see “ Nzenia Cornubiz,” 
p. 14, e¢ seg.), “ where, as Col. Forbes Leslie remarks, 
‘the vertical supporters of the tabular stone are co- 
lumnar,’ and cannot be said to enclose a space.” 
Before proceeding, it may be as well to remark what 
Mr. Borlase ignores, viz. that (as may be seen from the 
title to his paper) the criticism of Mr. Lukis (deserved, if 
severe) of “ Rude Stone Monuments,” was based upon the 
application of the “ Fyee-standing” theory, by the author, 
to the monuments of France, where he proved it was in- 
applicable. He said nothing at Somerset House about 
English monuments, although I believe it is his intention 
to say something about them on a future occasion, Mr. 
Borlase severely attacks Mr. Lukis, as though, in remoy- 
ing the French monuments from the supposed “free- 
standing class, he condemned all persons who held their 
own views on Sritish ones. Mr. Lukis’ views are not 
“hypotheses.” He simply declares that the plans of 
French monuments which he produced before the Society 
of Antiquaries in London teach the proposition he laid 
down, and that it is the duty of those who are unac- 
quainted with these examples to verify or disprove his 
statements and descriptions by visiting and inspecting 
them, and not to try and write him down when they have 
a very imperfect knowledge of them, or none at all. 
Previous to taking stock of Mr. Borlase’s weighty evi- 
dence in support of Lanyon Quoit as originally a dolmen 
proper, ze. a tripod cromlech, it should be noted what 
Fergusson states in respect to the West of England 
dolmens. In “ Rude Stone Monuments,” p. 163, he says : 
“ Even a cursory examination of these West Coast dol- 
mens would, I think, be sufficient to prove to any one that 
the theory that all were originally covered with earthen 
mounds ts utterly untenable.” Exactly so! A cursory 
examination (which, if we are to believe Mr. Borlase, it 
appears that Fergusson never took the trouble to make, 
at least as regards the Cornish circles)t is very likely to 
lead the uninitiated hasty observer to suppose as above. 
What a prolonged investigation will prove I leave the 
reader to find further on. It is, at all events, unfortunate 
for this theory that Mr. Borlase can only produce two 
* See Mr. Borlase’s letter to the Anfiguary, July 27, 1872. 
t Letter to the Antiguary, July 27, 1872. 
t Mr. Borlase mentions a pussible third example, in his “ Neenia,” p. 26. 
A fallen cromlech, which may haye possibly belonged to the “tripod class,” 
is to be found near Helmen Tor, in the parish of Lanlivery. 
[Aug. 28, 1873 
