On the Pagan Monuments of the Outer Hehrides. 353 
Avithin 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 
