118 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



found in Iceland and Norway, and a few in England and 

 Scotland. In these there was always a plain (roll) ; a 

 hillock or mound ; a court due east of the hill, and a temple. 

 Tynwald Hill in its present form is an artificial mound, 

 consisting of four circular platforms, the first having a 

 circumference at the bottom of 256 feet, and at the top of 

 240 feet; the second platform has a circumference at the 

 bottom of 162 feet; the third of 102 feet, and the fourth 

 of 60 feet. It is situated at St. John's, 2\ miles from Peel, 

 and is the scene of the formal assemblies held at least once 

 a year on July 5th (Midsummer Day, old style), when the 

 new laws are read to the people in the open air. 



Cronk-Howe-Mooar, " the Fairy Hill," is a very 

 striking, regularly shaped mound, lying on the low ground 

 behind Port Erin, and between Port St. Mary and Flesh- 

 wick. If wholly artificial, it is one of the largest and most 

 remarkable works of prehistoric date in the Island, and 

 forms a truly magnificent tumulus. It is probably, 

 however, in great part a mass of gravel and sand, left 

 by floods after the recession of the ice-sheet of the glacial 

 period, and very likely artificially shaped, and possibly 

 fortified at the top in prehistoric times- 



The name of this mound is an example of the 

 pleonastic or needless repetition of the same term in the 

 successive languages used in a district by the invaders, 

 each ignorant of the meanings of names they found — 

 Cronk-Howe-Mooar-Hill signifying simply the great Hill- 

 Hill-Hill in the three languages, Gaelic, Scandinavian, and 

 English. And probably each successive race has associated 

 the mound — as it, like many Neolithic structures, is still 

 associated — with the supernatural, or, at least, with fairy 

 lore. Such veneration and superstition lingers on to our 

 own day. for we are told that in 1859 " a farmer in the Isle 

 of Man offered a heifer up as a propitiatory sacrifice, so 



