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SMITH SOX I AX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL. 6 1 



Simpler forms, like " Kit's Coty House." one of the best known 

 dolmens * in England, are reproduced almost in duplicate in Sweden, 

 Holland, Denmark, Portugal, France, India, on the banks of the 

 Jordan, in the deserts of Arabia, India, Syria, Mexico, and Peru. 



The evidence available shows that rude undressed stones, like 

 menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs, are essentially sepulchral or memo- 

 rial stones, but their wide distribution over the earth's surface pre- 

 cludes our limiting them to any one race of men. In some parts of 



Fig. 4. — Talaya, Balearic Islands, from 

 Cartailhac. 



Europe they have been ascribed to the Druids, but the presence of 

 dolmens ' and cromlechs in lands where Druids never lived shows that 

 this popular belief must be somewhat modified. In their distribution 

 around the shores of the Mediterranean, Corsica, Sardinia, and the 

 Balearic Islands, thev seem to have followed certain laws which might 



1 Particularly fine table stones called talaya, occurring in the Balearic Islands, 

 have been described by Cartailhac, Monuments primitifs des isles Baleares, 

 Toulouse, 1892. The latest work on these talayas is by A. Bezzenberger, Vor- 

 L;e^chichtliche Bauwerke der Balearen, Zeit. fiir Ethnol., Berlin, 1907. 



2 Their names are Gaelic, but there is nothing to show that a cromlech or 

 dolmen was ever constructed by the Druids for an altar. 



