Megalithic Monuments of Brittany. 587 
rough, rude, unhewn granite stones—great in their mightiness, 
mysterious in their solitude, belonging to another civilization 
mighty in its time, but now dead and buried in the ages of the past. 
They have no inscriptions, and no history. We know them to 
have been the work of man, and that is about all. In the case 
of menhirs, they rear their heads like great giants. In the align- 
ments they stand in close array with serried parallel lines, and 
stretch across the level country miles away, their bodies gnawed 
and their heads scarred and seamed by the tooth of time since the 
distant ages when they were erected. It is their size, their sim- 
plicity, their number, their repetition, as well as their antiquity, 
which render them so imposing and so impressive. No words can 
convey to our mind an adequate idea of this impressiveness. They 
must be seen to be appreciated. 
A word as to the age of these alignments. 
The menhirs, whether standing or fallen, are frequently used as 
fences, the interstices being filled usually with an earthern embank- 
ment. In the headline, at the alignment of Erdeven, many 
had fallen and were thus covered with earth. On uncovering 
them, one four or five fect thick and ten or twelve feet long was 
found, hewn as it lay, for what purpose we knew not, but we could 
see the marks of the tool. It had served as a fire-place. There 
were the charcoal and stone bed and back wall, all bearing traces 
of fire. Pieces of flint, a small celt of fibriolite, débris of pottery, 
(some dolmen, but much Romar§, showed that this occupation 
belonged to the Roman times ; that is, somewhere between’ 40 
B. C. and 405 A. D. -This menhir had been prostrate from fifteen 
hundred to nineteen hundred years; yet it had previously stood on 
end long enough time for the top to become so weathered as to be 
plainly distinguishable from the bottom. 
There is on the menhirs quarry no mark of tool or of quarrying, 
yet I think they were quarried. They are so much weathered that 
all marks are worn away. Look atthe weathering on the top of the 
menhir of Penmarch (Fig. 6). No traces of a quarry have been 
discovered, though the granite of which the menhirs are formed 
18 the local rock, coming always near and many times quite to 
the surface. The menhirs have evidently been planted. In most 
cases they stood on the surface without any foundation, but founda- 
tions had been built where needed. In many cases the smaller end 
of the stone was downwards. ee 
