874 The American Naturalist. [October, 
by a single great slab (called table) or several flat stones. The 
smaller ones are said to resemble tables and altars. Many of 
those in the Morbihan are approached by covered galleries, which 
are generally straight, but at times curved ; the main structure or 
chamber is sometimes wider than long. They, in nearly each 
case, face the east, and were places of sepulture or tombs, being 
the precursors of the old-fashioned tombs of our cemeteries, and 
were covered by mounds of earth called zumuli. A tumulus 
sometimes enclosed a cairn or gi/ga/, or heap of squarish stones, 
six or eight inches or a foot in diameter, thrown or laid over the 
` dolmen to protect it from wild beasts. A cromlech in France is 
a circle or semicircle of menhirs or upright stones. The stones 
composing a cromlech are usually smaller than the majority of 
the menhirs, and the stones touch each other, while in an align- 
ment of menhirs the individual stones are from two to several 
feet apart. The word cromlech is from rouwmm, curved, and 
lec'h, meaning sacred, or, according to some writers, smaller stones. _ 
There are in the single department of Morbihan 306 dolmens, 
and throughout France 3,410. They are rarer in the north and 
east than in central, southern, and western France. Beginning 
with the most eastern point at which dolmens occur, archeologists 
have observed them in western India, where they have been used 
to the present. They are found in Palestine, near the Dead Sea, 
in the land of the Moabites. Going west, we find them on the 
other side of the Caucasus Mountains, in Circassia and the 
Crimea. Passing farther to the westward, they occur in Central 
Europe, northeast of Dresden, from Mecklenburg through Den- 
mark into southern Sweden, but none occur in Norway. Return- 
ing to Germany, many have been discovered in Hanover and the 
Low Country, as well as in Belgium, in Luxembourg, and Switz- 
erland. They also occur on the Channel Islands, in* Cornwall, 
in the Isle of Man and of Anglesea, some in western and a few 
in the eastern counties of England, while many occur in Scotland 
and in Ireland. Turning to the Mediterranean region, there are 
the ruins of dolmens in Corsica, in northern Spain, in Andalusia, 
in Portugal, while in northern Africa they are abundant from 
Morocco to Tripoli, especially in Algeria. Mortillet rejects the 


