he eae The American Naturalist. [October, 
group is nearly accomplished, and is almost entirely inclosed by 
a low stone wall. 
It was hard to leave this weird, fascinating, and impressive 
landscape, in which the natural features were tame enough, the 
strange interest being due entirely to the work of the heads and 
hands of a forgotten and extinct people, who have passed away 
leaving not a tradition behind them,—only these imposing monu- 
ments of stone. 
“No priestly stern procession now 
Streams through their row of pillars old; 
No victims bleed, no Druids bow,— 
Sheep make the daisied isles their fold.” 
Returning to our hotel to breakfast, we spent the afternoon in 
exploring the dolmens and alignments of the Quiberon peninsula, 
accompanied by M. Gaillard, who was so enthusiastic and inter- 
ested in having us see everything of archeological interest. 
The carriage road to St. Pierre, which is a little village situated 
on the new railway running to Quiberon, passes over a dreary, 
monotonous waste of sand, and as it runs along the middle of the 
neck of land reveals few extended views of the ocean. On our 
way we pass on the western shore, not far from the site of a 
Gaulish burial-place, from which M. Gaillard had recently exhumed 
seven skeletons, with bronze bracelets and Gaulish coins and 
pottery. After visiting the dolmens and tumuli of Port Blanc, on 
the west shore near St. Pierre, gathering pieces of pottery, bones, 
and flint chips, and seeing how the ocean has encroached on the 
slowly subsiding coast, so as to undermine the cliff and the 
tumulus, which must have been situated much farther inland in 
pre-Celtic times, we walked over the grassy, sandy wastes back 
to our cart, and drove past the village of Saint Pierre and its old 
windmill to the menhirs and cromlech on the shore. How long 
the rows of standing stones were originally, it is difficult to say, 
because the coast has sunken and the waves have undermined and 
overturned the stones at the eastern end. Walking down across 
the field, where the men, and women, too, were digging potatoes, 
we stood on the edge of the falaise, or sandy cliff, and the tide 

SP Pe Nags Poa F eee eee TE ey Mee ee eee TT Ee he hE ee eS LS 



