TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 157 
authority, the social cohesion produced by paternal authority would give that tribe 
an ascendency among its neighbours, and cause its customs to spread. 
On “ An Age of Colossi,” with Examples, by Photographs and Drawings, of 
the various Colossi extant in Britain and Ireland. ByJ.8. Puent, F.S.A., 
F.R.GS. 
This was the continuation of a subject commenced by the author at Bradford. 
Some instances of similar customs between the Egyptians, early people of America, 
and Chinese (the latter being, in his opinion, the most modern) were referred to as 
showing a similarity of treatment and worship of the Nile and the Mississippi rivers 
by the vast similitudes found along the margins of each, indicating that the ancient 
constructors of these similar designs on both rivers had a common origin; hence 
that it was probable that America was peopled by Western-Asian emigration prior 
to the central parts of Europe or even of Central Asia, as the facility for a coast- 
line route would be much greater than an overland one to migratory people. 
Subsequently a new feature presented itself in Egypt, of which he saw no 
evidence in America, the absence of which was well accounted for. In Egypt the 
River Nile became identified as the great beneficent serpent from the actual support 
of the Egyptian nation, through the river casting its great annual slough of mud, as 
the serpent casts its skin, giving a really tangible meaning to the adoption by the 
Egyptians of the casting of the serpent’s skin as an emblem not only of revivification 
but of immortality, the actual permanence of the nation depending upon it. 
In China, which he considered peopled subsequently to America, the same feature 
was found in a new phase. Instead of vast rivers being bordered with the great 
Colossi found in Egypt and America, artificial winding ways or courses, of sinuous 
and symmetrical arrangement, leading to tomb-temples, as in Egypt, were found, 
bordered with huge representations of animals as various and as mysterious as 
similitudes on the Mississippi rivers; and these courses or ways were, as far as he 
had at present been able to learn, called serpents by the Chinese—a fact hy no means 
improbable in a country where the serpent or dragon is a religious emblem even to 
the present time. From these similar customs he concluded people of the same stock 
had at some period introduced the same customs, modified by time and locality, and 
that the periods of such introduction were of a very remote date. The evidence he 
had obtained as to the Chinese custom was very kindly given him by Mr. William 
Simpson, who had travelled extensively in Asia and America. 
After giving these facts as to an age of Colossi, he again brought forward, 
amongst some of the Colossi of Europe, those of the British Isles, natural as well as 
artificial, showing in several cases that where huge natural similitudes of the human 
form or countenance were apparent, there vast artificial figures (some in Britain 
being larger than any other representations in the world) were to be found: the 
giant in Sussex 240 feet high, that in Dorsetshire 180 feet—in the vicinity of the first 
there being a great sphinx-like head on an isolated rock, which was a reputed Celtic 
deity, and vast human and other animal semblances on Dartmoor in the direc- 
tion of the second. The great countenances in the white rocks near the Giants’ 
Causeway appeared to have suggested similar simulation, as Pennant mentioned 
such a figure in the Isle of Arran just opposite, and a great lithic representation of 
the human form still exists in Sligo. |The Colossi of Easter Island and of 
Elephanta, Ellora, and Bamian were then referred to. In the case of the Dorset- 
shire giant, he considered it probable that Caesar had seen this as well as the figure 
at Wilmington—the one being, ashe had before eee out, near the place of his 
landing, the other on his way to Lidford, in the country of the West Britons, 
where, according to tradition, he and his army had been hospitably entertained ; 
and he considered Cesar’s statement that the people had many such yast images 
thus sufficiently attested. 
In consequence of the observations of Dr. Beddoe as to the interest attaching to 
the question, and the importance of ascertaining if any evidences of cremation could 
be found, he had been, he thought, successful in obtaining such evidences, though 
he gave reasons why, if there had not been such evidences nor any trace of them 
