72 Archceologia. 



Down, in the parish of Towednack, both composed of stones — 

 cairns, in fact — and bounded by a circle of larger stones. One was 

 forty-five feet in diameter, and six feet in height, and covered only 

 one interment, consisting of a very rude urn, containing the ashes 

 of the dead ; it had been placed exactly in the centre — which 

 was placed with the mouth downwards, on a large slab of granite, 

 and was protected by another slab of granite placed over it. It 

 was the common practice in these barrows, which antiquaries have 

 called British, to place the urn with the mouth downwards. The 

 urn, which is preserved not quite entire, is of the usual character 

 found in this class of barrows, but of a form not very common, 

 being not quite perfectly barrel-shaped. It is of coarse clay, of a 

 light greyish brown cclour, and has been sun-dried ; it is ornamented 

 round the upper rim with four lines of dotting, and the well-known 

 zigzag pattern deeply impressed between them. The other barrow 

 was smaller, for it measured thirty-six feet in diameter, and only 

 four feet in height ; but it was of the same form and materials. 

 There was no urn, or regular interment, but in the centre were 

 found traces of burning, some bones of animals, and the half of a 

 flint pebble, which had been artificially broken. 



At a recent meeting of the Ethnological Society (June 7th), 

 the Swedish Professor ISTilsson communicated a paper on Stone- 

 henge, which excited some interest. His theory is that this 

 remarkable monument of antiquity belongs to the bronze period, a 

 bronze period of his own (Professor Nilsson has published a book 

 on it), which he regards as having been introduced by the Phoeni- 

 cians, and he supposed the date of Stonehenge to be about four 

 thousand years before Christ. According to the doctrines of this 

 school of antiquaries, the Phoenicians had established themselves 

 not only in every part of Britain, but even in the remotest parts of 

 Scandinavia, and they must have formed a very important part of 

 the population. Professor Nilsson ascribes to these Phoenicians 

 ISTew Grange, in Ireland, and similar monuments, as well as the 

 monuments known as cromlechs, Druidical circles, etc., wherever 

 they are found in the British islands. In this paper, Professor 

 Nilsson shows an extraordinary want of critical appreciation of 

 facts and arguments, for he assumes that a certain supposed 

 Phoenician inscription found in Scotland, and exhibited at the 

 Cambridge meeting of the British Association, where the blunder 

 about it was satisfactorily exposed, is still a genuine monument of 

 the Phoenician occupation of Britain. It is a very remarkable 

 circumstance that this presumed presence of the Phoenicians in 

 Britain rests upon no foundation whatever — that no ancient writer 

 known to us has ever said that they were here, and that no ancient 

 monument points to their presence here. The very writer who has 

 been quoted in proof of the visits of the Phoenicians to Britain, 

 Strabo, says just the contrary, for he makes the Cassiterides, the 

 island from which he pretends that the Phoenicians obtained their 

 tin, a different place from Britain, and more distant from the con- 

 tinent of Europe, and that the opinion which identifies them with 

 the Scilly Islands is a mere blundering guess is evident, for the 



