_ examples of the tripod class in all Cornwall, viz. those 
of Lanyon and Caerwynen, and those are both modern 
_vestorations of dilapidated ruins: not a single stone of 
either of these examples is as it originally stood “ 27 sitze.” 
Idid not see Mr. Borlase’s letter to NATURE until the 
_ 3rdinst. On the sth I obtained old Dr. Borlase’s quaint 
volume on the “ Antiquities Historical and Monumental 
of the County of Cornwall” (2nd ed. 1769), from a chap- 
fer in which volume Mr, Fergusson borrows his title 
of “ Rude Stone Monuments,” and on the following day 
_ visited Lanyon Quoit itself, sketched it, and compared the 
accounts of it on the very spot, and the following is the 
result of my investigation. I will take Mr. Borlase’s 
statements categorically :— 
(1) Lanyon Quoit “always was, as it is now, a free- 
_ standing dolmen.” 
(©) I humbly submit that Lanyon Quoit could not 
_ possibly have been always as it is now, from the fact of 
_ its having fallen, during a violent storm in 1815, whilst a 
comparison of its plan, as it now is in its restored state, 
_ and as it is given by Dr. Borlase, shows that the stones 
7 have been moved. The supporters were originally pa- 
- 
rallel, and are now at different angles to one another. 
(2) “A tripod dolmen consisting of three slim pillars 
_ supporting on their summits a horizontal stone.” 
: (2) I leave it to my readers to judge from the accom- 
_ panying representation (from a photograph) of the crom- 
Blech whether, from the flat nature of the component 
_ Stones, the supporters have not more or less the character 
of slabs rather than that columnar shape necessary for the 
_ so-called “Table stone proper :” and whether the ¢hree slim 
pillars would not have been more accurately described as 
_ stout stone slabs. The good Rector of Ludgvan, more 
_ than a hundred years ago, more aptly described these 
_ Cornish monuments.* “Three or four large flags or thin 
_ stones capped with a much larger one, which go by the 
British name of cromléhs;” and again, “In several parts 
of Cornwall we find a large flat stone in a horizontal posi- 
tion (or near it) supported by other flat stones fixed on 
their edges and fastened in the ground.” He never men- 
tions pillars or columnar supports. 
Mr. Borlase omits to mention the fourth slab (D) which is 
R oe to the north (see plate), and the fytk and sixth 
- flat stones (E and F) (possibly one broken in two) which lie 
imbedded in the soil at the foot of the south supporter, in 
which position they were apparently placed by the re- 
storers in 1824 to prop up the upright slab. ¢ 
(3) Two drawings of it in its pristine condition by Canon 
Rogers, 1797, and Dr. Borlase, 1747, “agree in represent- 
ing the slimness of the pillars, their distance apart, and 
great height of monument, features which render it not 
unlike a gigantic three-legged milking-stool.” 
Dr. Borlase’s drawing shows four upright slabs, al- 
though the fourth does not apparently touch the cap- 
stone. I think that the supporters A, B, C, may be 
identified with those in Dr. Borlase’s drawing with toler- 
able certainty, and D, now prostrate, was the fourth 
upright : that E and F were once also upright is highly 
probable. 
(4) Then, as now, there was no mound about it. It 
stood on a low bank of earth and the area had been often 
disturbed by treasure-seekers.” 
(4) Dr. Borlase says “this cromléh stands on a low 
bank of earth not two feet higher than the adjacent soil, 
about 20 feet wide and 70 feet long.” The cromlech 
stands as much in as on the long mound which, accord- 
ing to the above measurements, would contain at least 
2,000 cubic feet of earth, besides the many rough stones 
“not the natural furniture of the place,” which Dr. Borlase 
also mentions. It bears every appearance of having 
formed the base of a long barrow, 
* Antiquities, pp. 159 and 223. 
+ The younger Borlase acknowledges that “‘several of the stones had 
been broken,” .“ Nzenia,” p. 18, 
345 
(5) “ No houses are near it which could have received 
the stones of a denuded mound.” 
(5) A good road with rough stone walls on each side 
of it, which runs within a few yards of tae cromlech, 
would well account for a portion of a denuded mound or 
cairn whose stones would be well adapted for building 
the walls and metalling the road. 
(6) “It is difficult to see how a kist-vaen or septum of 
any kind could have been formed beneath the cap-stone. 
Had a wall of sm2// stones been built from pillar to pillar 
the height of the superincumbent mound must have forc2d 
them inwards, a catastrophe which the “‘dolmen-builders” 
were always careful to avoid.” 
(6) Mr. Borlase must have had experience in his re- 
searches among the underground bee-hive caves to know 
how extensively microlithic dry masonry'can be so built 
up as to resist any outside pressure of a superincumbent 
mound. 
(7) “Had Jarge stones placed on edge formed the 
walls of the kist, how is it they are a// removed, while 
every other cromlech in the district retains them ?” 
(7) In “Neenia Cornubiz,” p. 43, Mr. Borlase writes, 
with regard to Lower Lanyon Cromlech, “Two stones 
are all that now remain, viz. the covering stone and one 
of the supporters ; the others having been split up and 
carried away for building.” 
(8) “My strongest proof is yet to come, The inter- 
mént was not in the kist at all, A grave had received the 
body six feet under the natural surface of the surrounding 
soil, and within the area described by the structure. This 
being the case, of what use could an enclosed kist have 
been, or why should the cenotaph be covered in at all ?” 
(8) Dr. Borlase discovered a pit within the area of the 
kist-vaen of Mulfra Quoit ; and Mr. Borlase himself re- 
lates in his Nzenia “a small pit seems to have been sunk 
in the centre” of Chywoone cromlech which he acknow- 
ledges was buried inatumulus. This method of irter- 
ment would therefore seem common to these three struc- 
tures, 
(9) “On the southern side of the structure, and so near 
it that a mound over the monument must have inevitably 
covered it up, stands a little circular ring cairn of the or- 
dinary type, in the centre of which I found the remains of 
an inner ring which, though now rifled, had doubtless 
contained an interment.” 
(9) Dr. Borlase mentions with regard to the long low 
bank above-mentioned “ at the south end, has (sc) many 
rough stones, some pitched on end, in no order ; yet not 
the natural furniture of the surface, but designedly put 
there ; though by the remains, it is difficult to say what 
their original position was.” 
Should Mr. Borlase’s recognition of the confused ag- 
gregation of stones as a ring cairn be correct, it is by no 
means inconsistent with the theory that a mound once en- 
veloped the cromlech and (as Mr. Borlase suggests would 
be the case) included the ring cairn in its area. 
A parallel case occurs at Moustoir Carnac in Brittany, 
a plan and section of which, after M. Galles, is given in 
Fergusson’s work, p. 358, and which I have personally 
examined. Here we find a true dolmen, éwo ring cairns, 
and a kist within one large long tumulus or barrow. 
From my own inspection, I agree with the older Por- 
lase, that “nothing is to be absolutely concluded, there 
having happened so many disturbances,” but I have liitie 
doubts that whatever it was it formed some part of a 
structure in connection with and belonging to the crom- 
lech. 
Whilst comparing Cornish cromlechs with French dol- 
mens, a comparison should be made between Chywoone 
cromlech* and Mr. Fergusson’s characteristic example at 
Grandmont} in Bas-Languedoc (woodcut No. 128), with 
regard to which he says, “The umbrella form is hardly 
* Nenia Cornubiz, p. s5- 
ers Rude Stone Monuments,” pp. 343, 344. Figured in Nature, vol. y. 
p. 387, 
