870 The American Naturalist. [October, 
AMONG THE PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS OF 
BRITTANY. 
BY ALPHEUS S. PACKARD. 
4 
OT far from the Land’s End of France, and adjoining tne 
picturesque coast of Finisterre, a favorite resort not only 
of French, but also of English and American artists, lie the 
barren and almost treeless plains of Morbihan, one of the eighty- 
six departments into which the French Republic is now divided. 
Morbihan is Celtic for “ The Little Sea,” and the district is famous 
not for its scenery, for the landscape is very tame, but for its 
impressive and mysterious so-called Celtic or Druidical ruins. 
These remains are mounds, tombs, and monoliths erected by a 
race whose remote descendants still occupy the soil, their farms 
and dwellings and hamlets bordering upon, and in part inclosing, 
the tombs and lines of stone pillars which keep silent watch over 
the region. The most imposing and best known of these series 
of pillars or “ menhirs” are the great “alignments” of Carnac, 
which have for centuries excited the curiosity and interest of 
travelers and antiquarians. 
Such monuments, if they ever existed in so great perfection in 
other parts of France, have been removed by farmers in clearing 
their lands, or in building their own dwellings, as with us glacial 
boulders have been removed and used for building stone walls. 
On the remote coast of Morbihan, however, where the land is 
comparatively sterile and treeless, and the population is sparse, 
not only have the monuments been tolerably well preserved, but 
the Bretons themselves, perhaps speaking a language derived 
from their pre-Celtic ancestors of the later stone and early bronze 
age, have preserved in a degree the probable features, the folk- 
lore, and some of the customs of the times when these monuments 
were erected. 
Hence a journey to Morbihan, with its weird, somber land- 
scape, its cider-drinking, superstitious, Celt-speaking peasants, 
1 From the New York /ndependent. 

Ss tbe a e a a E T rS EE S E "3 


