By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 159 



it reaches a stone which is laid across in an inclined position, and 

 which seems to forbid further progress : beyond this, the gallery 

 immediately expands again to the width of three feet, and to the 

 height of from six to ten feet at the entrance of the dome. The 

 chamber is an irregular circle, about 22 feet in diameter, covered 

 with a dome of a bee-hive form, constructed of massive stones laid 

 horizontally and projecting one beyond the other, till they approxi- 

 mate and are finally capped with a single one : the height of the 

 dome is about 20 feet. The chamber has three quadrangular 

 recesses, forming a cross, one facing the entrance gallery, and one 

 on each side : in each of these recesses was placed a stone urn or 

 sarcophagus, of a simple bowl form, two of which remain to this 

 day : of these recesses the East and the West are about eight feet 

 square, the North is somewhat deeper. The entire length of the 

 cavern from the entrance of the gallery to the end of the recess is 

 81 feet 8 inches. The stones of which the entire structure consists 

 are of great size, viz., from 12 to 18 feet long by 6 broad ; a great 

 number of the stones within the chamber, as well as in the gallery, 

 are carved with spiral, lozenge-shaped, and zig-zag lines, and in 

 the West chamber there are marks, which have been supposed, 

 though perhaps without reason, to be an alphabetic inscription. 

 That this large tumulus was constructed "as a tomb or great 

 sepulchral pyramid," &.n^ that the "oval granite basins originally 

 contained human remains " admits of no doubt : and as to its age, 

 " by most of the learned and intelligent modern archa3ologists it is 

 referred to the most remote period of Celtic occupation, and far 

 beyond the time of the invasion of the Danes, to which people, like 

 80 many other Irish antiquities, it has been sometimes attributed ; 

 indeed it is generally supposed to be coeval with, by some to be even 

 anterior to, its brethren on the Nile." i Such is the remarkable 

 tumulus of New Grange in Ireland, apparently the very counter- 

 part of Silbury : and I have been thus minute in giving all the 



' Compare Mr. Scarth's account of this tumulus in his very able paper on 

 " Ancient Chambered Tumuli," published in the 8th vol. of the Proceedings of 

 the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society : Taunton 1859 

 pp. 24 — 27. ' ' 



