878 The American Naturatst. [October, 
alone, served as a monument, and was evidently in direct relation 
to the tumulus and the inclosed dolmen, for we noticed one 
standing sentinel over a dolmen ; and they are sometimes erected 
on the summit of a tumulus, as at Ile de Sein ; in such case they 
may have been put up to indicate burials. The dolmen near the 
base of the Mane-ar-Groac’hsis a famous one, and, like many of 
the others, has been purchased and restored by the government. 
It is the Dol-ar-Marc’hadourien, or Table of the Merchants. On 
the under or inner side of the great table or covering slab, which 
is twenty feet long by thirteen feet wide, was engraved a large 
stone symbolic hatchet with its handle. That these images are 
in reality rude. representations of hatchets seems plausible. Stone 
axes, apparently made expressly for ceremonial use, are found in 
nearly all dolmens, having been placed there by the side of the 
dead; and they are in nearly all cases beautifully finished, with 
sharp, unbroken edges, and often of jade, which is only now to 
be found in Asia and Polynesia, being one of the rarest minerals 
in Europe, Some authors suppose that the axe was regarded by 
the people as the symbol of separation, an emblem of the end of 
life. However this may be, whether from its utility alone in ` 
every-day life, or its use as a weapon of war, it must have been a 
highly prized and venerated instrument, to be so often engraved 
on tombs, and so invariably buried with the dead. 
This region is especially rich in dolmens, as they are scattered 
all about Lockmariaquer ; the dolmen of Mane Lud being situated 
on one of the principal streets, next to a house, the tumulus once 
inclosing it rising behind. 
A little way out from the town is the dolmen of Kervress; 
remarkable for the cup-shaped pits in the under side of the cov- 
ering slab, and which, of course, must have been made before 
the stone was put in place. These cup-shaped hollows are 
scattered irregularly over the surface, varying somewhat in size, 
the largest being about an inch and a half in diameter. They 
are a great puzzle to archeologists, who can make nothing of 
them. Occurring in Germany, Switzerland, among the Alps and 
the Pyrenees, and in Portugal, both in dolmens and on menhirs, 
they had some meaning to the men of the stone and of the bronze 


