On the Pagan Monuments of the Outer Hebrides. 353 



within a short distance of each other; but no peculiarity is 

 observable in the selection of their position ; and, from all that 

 is known at the present time, their place of site appears to be 

 accidental, or at least chosen without any distinct motive. 

 One of these circles, the far-famed stones of Callernish, occu- 

 pies the flat of a ridge of hilly ground, while two others are 

 near together on a wet and boggy moor, at the distance of a 

 mile to the eastward of the first. If the circles situated on 

 the moor had been visited two or three years ago, nothing but 

 a few gray blocks even with, or protruding two or three feet 

 above the bog, would have been seen, and even many of the 

 stones of the large circle of Callernish were completely grown 

 over and buried in peat. By the liberality of Sir J. Matheson 

 these three circles have been excavated, and it was then found 

 that the peat had accumulated to the height of between five 

 and six feet. From an attentive examination of the founda- 

 tion of these circles, I arrive at the conclusion that the stones 

 were pitched before the growth of peat had commenced, or at 

 least at the very commencement of the peat-forming epoch. 

 The upright stones are founded in the (so called) boulder-clay 

 which overspreads this, with most other parts of Scotland, and 

 the peat rises uniformly from the clay to the surface, which 

 would not be the fact if holes had been dug in the peat to 

 receive the stones. Besides, some stones that had early fallen 

 (in the smaller circles) rest upon the clay without any peat 

 below them ; and still further, in two of these circles are loose 

 heaps of stones, — "cairns," as they are called, the grave-mounds 

 of the illustrious dead, — which also rest upon the clay, without 

 any intermediate floor of turf. If any peat had grown, it 

 would be found beneath these cairns, for I consider it childish 

 to suppose that it would have been cleared away. At the 

 excavation of a tumulus at Stennes, in the Orkneys, which 

 was presumed to be of or about the same age as the adjacent 

 stone circles, the heath and moss on which the materials of 

 the tumulus had been heaped were found in as good preserva- 

 tion as when the mound was made. 



Besides the circles named, there are others, both in Lewis 

 and Uist, which are only discovered by an occasional stone 

 peering above the surface ; and I see no reason to doubt that 



