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THE STONE CIRCLES OF CORNWALL AND OF SCOTLAND. 

 A COMPARISON. 



By a. Iv. IviewiS, F.C.A., Treasurer Anthropological Institute. 



The Cornish, circles are all single rings of greater or less 

 diameter, even when grouped together like the " Hurlers," or 

 like the two near St. Just, on the moor on the south side of Carn 

 Kenidjack, they are not concentric, but are separate single rings. 

 Dr. Borlase indeed figured a strange group as existing in his 

 time at St. Just,* which he called the Botallek Circles, but it is 

 almost certain from his own plan that they were either a natural 

 outcrop or the remains of a cluster of circular huts — which we 

 cannot now tell, as they have long since disappeared. At 

 Boscawen-un, and perhaps at the Stripple Stones, stones stood 

 within the ring, but there is no other specially distinguishing 

 feature about the construction of the circles themselves, though, 

 as I have pointed out on other occasions, there is much in the 

 arrangement of some of them with regard to others and to the 

 hills near them which is worthy of notice. f 



In Scotland the case is different. The circles in the south- 

 west and up the west coast of Scotland generally are not very 

 different from those of Cornwall, except that they sometimes 

 have an inner concentric ring, and that the stones are mostly not 

 so regular in shape and size. The principal exception is the very 

 remarkable monument at Callernish, on the west side of the 

 island of Lewis, which consists of a circle 42 feet in diameter, 

 with a stone 1 7 feet high in the centre, by the side of which is a 

 tomb, which is probably of later date than the circle ; single 

 lines of 4 or 5 stones each extend east, south, and west from 

 outside the circle, and somewhat east of north there are two 

 longer lines, one of nine and the other of ten stones ; the ends of 

 these lines are 294 feet from the centre of the circle, that is to 

 say just seven diameters of the circle, which can hardly be the 

 result of chance, especially as similar proportions exist elsewhere. 



* " Antiquities of Cornwall," 1769. 



f Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, vol. XIII, page 107. 



