June 13, 1872] 



ANCIENT AND 



NATURE 



127 



RECENT STONE MONU- 

 MENTS 



IN Mr. Fergiisson's new book on Ancient Stone Monu- 

 ments, mention is made of the Menhirs and Dolmens, 

 both ancient and modern, which are found in the Khasia 

 Hills, North-Eastern Bengal. 



Having been for some time engaged in the survey of 

 these hills, 1 can furnish a few particulars concerning these 

 monuments which may be of interest. On one occasion, 

 returning to my camp after a day's work, I was startled 

 by hearing a loud shouting as of a number of men exert- 

 ing their strength together and getting the time by 

 shouting in chorus, much as sailors do on board ship. 



I found that the sound proceeded from an assembly of 

 Khasias, who were putting up three of these menhirs to 

 the memory of a deceased villager. They were at a con- 

 siderable distance from me, so that I could not clearly see 

 their mode of procedure, and as on occasions of funerals 

 and the ceremonies connected with them the Khasias 

 are invariably more or less drunk and unruly, it would 

 have been inexpedient to have gone amongst them. I 

 was therefore compelled to wait until the next morning, 

 when I went and inspected the scene of operations. 



I found that three menhirs of no very great size had 

 been put up, and that the stones had been raised in a very 

 simple way by the use of long levers formed of young 

 trees and ropes made of an exceedingly tough kind of 

 creeper found in abundance all over these hills. The 

 whole affair had been made the occasion of a feast on a 

 very large scale ; bones of slaughtered cattle, and empty 

 grog jars lay around in numbers ; the skulls of the oxen 

 (some fourteen or fifteen in number) being arranged in a 

 very fantastic way before the menhirs. As the arrange- 

 ment of these skulls at once suggested to my mind the 

 probable origin of a well-known architectural ornamenta- 

 tion, I attach a sketch showing how they were placed, viz.. 





in a row at even distances apart on two horizontal poles, 

 which were themselves supported on twj upright poles. 

 I was at some pains to inquire the meaning of these 

 menhirs, bat could only gather that they were intended 

 to perpetuate the memory of some local celebrity. 



In the case of the dolmens, so often found put up in 

 front of the menhirs, I was informed that they served to 

 give a kind of rough shelter to the ashes of the deceased, 

 these ashes being kept for a year or two in the house and 

 then brought out and scattered under the broad flat stone 

 of the dolmen. 



Moreover, the Khasias use these dolmens in their ex- 

 traordinary form of divination by the breaking of eggs. 

 This divination, which may be said to form their nearest 

 approach to a religious worship, and which is on that ac- 

 count of peculiar interest, is conducted as follows : — On 

 the top of the dolmen the Khasia who officiates puts five 



little pellets of clay and chewed betel nut, in the form of 

 a semicircle, thus — 



Then he stands upon the stone, and commences a wild kind 

 of chant, having a rhythm and intonation utterly different 

 from that of their ordinary songs. At a certain period 

 in this chant he draws an egg from his pouch, and dashes 

 it down on to the stone, as near the centre of the semi- 

 circle as he can. If the mass of the yolk scatters towards 

 and over the pellets the omens are propitious, each pellet 

 of the five having its meaning ; but if the yolk scatters 

 away from the semicircle of pellets the prognostication 

 is unfavourable. 



In his book Mr. Fergusson seems to suppose that the 

 Menhirs and Dolmens mark places of assembly ; but this 

 is not the case, for near almost every large and old- 

 established village there is found a place of assembly 

 provided with stone seats, often prepared with much 

 labour, and well adapted to the purpose for which it is in- 

 tended. 



I would also demur to Mr. Fergusson's inference that 

 the Khasias are a physically inferior race ; on the con- 

 trary they are a race possessing muscular strength to 

 a singular and exceptional degree, as witness the fact that 

 it is a very ordinary feat with them for one Coolie to carry 

 a full-grown man in a kind of chair strapped on his back, 

 along a road more than eight miles long, and ascending 

 upwards of 4,000 feet. M. T. Sale 



DISCOVERY OF EXTINCT MAMMALS IN 

 THE VICTORIA CA VES, SETTLE 



THE scientific public will be pleased to hear that the 

 Committee who have been exploring the Settle 

 caves for two or three years past, have at length met with 

 a great success. Till within the last fortnight we hid 

 discovered only remains of different ages from the 

 Neolithic period to the present. These, though of groat 

 interest as throwing light on the vicissitudes and suc- 

 cession of later races, had to a certain extent been fore- 

 stalled by the previous --escarches in this district of Mr. 

 James Farrer, of Ingleborough, and by Mr. Jackson, the 

 original discoverer of the Victoria Cave, and present 

 superintendent of the work carried on in it by the Com- 

 mittee. Those remains were all in comparatively recent 

 deposits. Beneath them was a great thickness of barren 

 ground, consisting of a laminated clay in some places 

 twelve feet thick, and below that again a great accumula- 

 tion of angular fragments of limestone in a matrix of 

 clay. 



At a depth of about twenty feet in this we have now 

 found elephant, rhinoceros, hyc-cna, a crushed canine of 

 a much larger carnivore, &c. The elephant's teeth found 

 belong to a young individual, and the number of gnawed 

 bones and other indications of the cave having been a 

 den of some large carnivores render it probable that the 

 elephant was dragged into it by them. 



The facts have a special interest, from this older group 

 of mammals not having been previously met with in this 

 district. It is to be hoped that when we can mvestigate 

 these important beds more thoroughly we may get some 

 light thrown upon the relation of man to these extinct 

 animals, and of both to the Glacial period, undoubted de- 

 posits of which occur in other caves hard by. 



