1891.] Among the Prehistoric Monuments of Brittany. 887 
over a not very extensive region, and their similarity of plan and 
contemporaneity with the dolmens, were the outcome or tangible 
expression of the religious nature of the pre-Celtic mind. The 
people had, long before starting on their westward migration, 
emerged from savagery, and after centuries of physical and intel- 
lectual effort, having peopled Europe, now strong in numbers, and 
dominated by lofty conceptions and wonderful zeal and industry, 
had met together, and working, as if impelled by a common 
inspiration and impulse, under the direction of their priests, raised 
these unique monuments. The population must have been dense; 
it was not now migratory, but an agricultural as well as pastoral 
people. The materials for the dolmens and menhirs were not far 
off. No traces of quarries have survived, because the Atlantic, 
in conjunction with the plutonic forces at work in the earth’s 
crust, has lowered the coast, and washed away all traces of these 
mighty workers in stone. As we noticed in the materials of 
some of the dolmens and menhirs, the rock is a porphyritic 
granite, with oblong crystals of feldspar and scales of black 
mica, readily rusting on exposure to the air. On the cliffs at the 
ferry, on the way to Lockmariaquer, we noticed the rock in. place. 
It readily and naturally breaks by the action of frost into square 
or oblong blocks, fitted either for monoliths, or for the small, 
squarish blocks with which the galgals were formed. 
More industrious and inventive than savages, they made use of 
their oxen, and, whole families or tribes cooperating, the busy 
multitudes, swarming like bees, with the use of stone axes and 
chisels, and the aid of fire, quarried the big slabs for the dolmens, 
and the monoliths for the alignments. They probably moved 
them on rollers a few hundred yards, or even one or several miles, 
inland, and then, with a skill developed by long experience, and 
probably after many a bitter failure, set the stones in place. Some 
of the menhirs stood on the surface, without any foundation; in ~ 
other cases foundations for them were carefully laid. So long 
have they stood that all marks of quarrying have been effaced by 
the agency of the atmosphere. As Wilson states, a menhir in the 
headline of the Erdeven alignment, which had been overturned 
and used as a fireplace, though with tool-marks on it, and buried 
Am. Nat.—October.—3. 
