By the Rev. W. C. Lukis. 



169 



implements and ornaments, accompanying the earliest interments in 

 them, and the total absence of metal, would remove them to a date 

 anterior to the period of commercial intercourse with the Phoenicians, 

 when the use of metals is said to have been introduced into Britain. 

 At that time we have no knowledge of the existence of Druidism. 

 Mr. Wright says that "the mass of our British antiquities belongs 

 to an age immediately preceding the arrival of the Romans, and 

 to the period which followed." (Celt. Roman and Saxon, p. 86.) 

 This remark must be intended to apply to the contents of ordinary 

 barrows, and not to chambered tumuli. The occasional appearance 

 of a gold ornament or of a coin, &c, only proves that these sepul- 

 chral vaults were used for centuries, — the coin, &c, belonging to 

 the most recent interments. The gold collars in the chambered 

 tumulus at Plouharnel in Brittany, were not found in the main 

 western chamber, but in a modern cist in the avenue leading to the 

 main chamber. The silver bracelet in " La Roche qui sonne," 

 Guernsey, belonged to a comparatively recent interment in a much 

 more ancient tomb. Mr. Bateman in his " Derbyshire Yestiges " 

 mentions the discovery of a remarkable brass dagger, silvered over, 

 together with flint instruments, in a cromlech between Windle 

 Nook and Buxton, but the monument is clearly, by its construction, 

 a stone cist of a later date than the cromlechs of which I have been 

 speaking. The same may be said of the chambered tumulus on 

 Minninglowe Hill, described by the same author. So too with 

 regard to the so-called cromlech in Belgium on the borders of the 

 Ardennes, mentioned by Mr. Wright, containing a Roman inter- 

 ment. 



