MORTIMER: STAR-WORSIIIP INDICATKI) BY GROUPING OF BARROWS. 207 
Its numerous repetitions can only be attributed to the great 
religious importance in which it was held by the builders of these 
mounds. 
This special arrangement of the barrows, as the following extract 
from Robert Knox's " East Yorkshire," page 182, will show, is not 
confined to this district ; neither am I the first who has noticed this 
peculiar figure in the grouping of the British burial mounds. Knox 
says : — " Near Ugthorpe Rails (seven miles west of Whitby), on that 
side of the Guisborough road, two stone pillars stand erect, having a 
cluster of conspicuous hones between, forming the figure of ' Charles' 
Wain' (in the constellation Ursa Major).'' 
I am inclined to believe that this alhision to the arrangement of 
the ban'ows is probably the first ever put in print ; it seems to have 
been mentioned merely as a chance arrangement, as Knox makes no 
further reference to it. 
In hastily looking over some of the Ordnance Maps of other 
parts of the Yorkshire Wolds, I observed several more or less com- 
plete plans of "Charles' Wain," which I need nf)t here describe, and 
some are named "The Seven Howes." 
I have also referred to the six-inch maps of part of the Wiltshire 
Downs, and noticed that the numerous barrows in the immediate 
neighbourhood of Stonehenge are, like the barrows I have myself 
excavated, arranged in clusters. I also recognised in several of these 
clusters the more or less complete figure of " Charles' Wain." Here 
also are groups named " The Seven Barrows." 
It is not improbable that a carefully constructed map of the 
barrows of other counties would show that this arrangement was 
frequently adopted by the barrow builders in most parts of Europe, 
and is also traceable in some of the North American groups. 
From plans of the works of Port Azallan and of the Hutsonville 
(Illinois) mounds, given in Foster's " Prehistoric Races of the United 
States of x\merica," pages 136 and 139, there appear to be three or 
more figures of " Charles' Wain " traceable in the two crowded groups 
of mounds there shown. 
Also, very probably, this placing of the burial mounds after this 
figure would be found, if carefully made plans of other groups of 
