886 The American Naturalist. a (October, 
by the monuments it has left behind, existed in other parts oe 
France and of the Old World. According to the latest and 
most trustworthy authority, M. Cartailhac, whose work entitled 
“La France Préhistorique” appeared in1889, thereare in Morbihan 
eight of these groups of alignments, including the cromlechs con- 
nected with them, and nine, far less important, in Finisterre, five 
in the department of Ille-et-Vilaine, and six or seven others, of 
small size and slight importance, in the rest of France, most of 
them only forming one or two short rows of standing stones. 
Mortillet says there are in France fifty-six alignments, in fifteen 
departments. Analogous to the alignments in France are the 
Sarsden Stones in Berkshire, England, which are eo ap ob i 
i 800 menhirs. 
Solitary standing stones or monoliths of a later age occur in 
the Pyrenees, in Corsica, and in Northern Africa, and at present 
the natives of Madagascar and the Khasias of Northwestern India 
raise stone columns around their tombs ; but these areganalogous 
to the solitary menhirs planted near the dolmens, or those com- 
posing the cromlechs, surrounding dolmens, or tumuli. Whether 
of original prehistoric growth or a later development, the solitary 
menhirs are in Thibet and in other lands venerated as symbols of 
the reproductive powers of nature, Finally, we have the solitary 
obelisks of Egypt, and the monumental stones of medizval times, 
which have survived to our day in the granite shafts and marble 
columns memorizing great national events, or sacred to the mem- 
ory of the departed. 
The alignments were not made spasmodically, at irregular inter- 
vals, one stone after another being set up during a long period, 
as in a modern cemetery, but they were evidently built at one 
period after a fixed design or pattern, to which all conform. 
Those of Morbihan and of Finisterre were undoubtedly planted 
at the same time by the same people,—a race animated by other 
ideas than those of living merely an animal existence. It is not 
probable that they were memorials of some conquest or other 
event of great importance. It seems natural to conclude that 
these vast and imposing relics, whether we consider the size of 
the stones themselves, their enormous number, their repetition 



