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mysteriously disposed, should produce a general impression 
of awe and veneration, and that they should come to be 
regarded as objects of superstition, or even of religious 
worship, such as that practised by the Druids in these 
islands, seeing that they are looked upon at this day as a 
scientific or mechanical puzzle by philosophers and archae- 
ologists of all countries. 
Of course it is not intended to maintain that all 
cromleachs were thus naturally or accidentally formed. On 
the contrary, the greater number, especially of the small 
ones, were evidently artificial. All that I mean to contend 
for is, that the original cromleach was formed by nature or 
accident, and used as a grave for countless ages before its 
artificial imitation, which ultimately assumed the form of a 
rude tomb. With reference to those artificial cromleachs in 
which the superincumbent stone was of extraordinary 
magnitude, as at Plas Newydd, in the Island of Anglesey, I 
believe that the great stone was an erratic block dropped 
upon a gravel or mud bank of diluvial drift, which would 
subsequently become covered with vegetable soil. By 
carefully removing this original foundation, and replacing 
it by rude props of rough stone, such a structure could be 
easily made without much engineering science or mechanical 
contrivance. In fact there was a similar block on Lord 
Anglesey's lawn, within a short distance of the celebrated 
Druids' Altar, which might be readily converted into a 
second great cromleach by such simple means. 
As the cromleach is found almost in every part of the 
inhabited world, the circumstance had been adduced as a 
conclusive proof of an identity of origin of the various races 
living in these remotely separated countries. Is it not more 
reasonable to look upon such a coincidence as a curious 
instance of the identity of the instinctive resources of the 
human intellect at all times and in all places, under similar 
