464 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
given a satisfactory account of tlie mechanical means by which 
they could have been lifted into their places. Like those 
curious Druidical monuments in Western Europe and on our 
own island, they contain a mystery. The construction shows 
three stages of rough art. The earliest involves only the 
selection of large blocks, whose surface was dressed, but of 
which the natural shape was not altered. Marvellous ingenuity 
was shown in so selecting and placing these stones that the 
salient angles of one should tit the retiring angles of others, 
so that a solid and compact wall should be formed without 
mortar. The blocks of this work vary from one to five tons 
in weight. The second stage involved the use of larger stones 
cut to regular shapes, but not with right angles. The stones 
are polygons, perfectly worked and accurately fitted. Some of 
the larger stones must weigh ten tons, and there are few 
smaller than two tons, even to fill up gaps. Lastly, the stones 
are found regularly squared, like those still used, but of 
dimensions utterly beyond comparison. Single stones, sixteen 
feet long, four or five feet high, and three or four wide, are not 
unknown. Large stones have been raised to a height of ten 
or twelve feet ; and the walls themselves that surrounded the 
town of Samos in Cephalonia, when it was attacked by the 
Romans, were not less than twenty-five feet in height. It is 
clear that the oldest work had failed from time to time, and 
had been replaced here and there by new work in the style of 
the day ; and thus the same wall will contain portions of each 
style down to the Roman occupation. It is certain that from 
the time of the Romans to the present day there have not been 
inhabitants in the Ionian Islands to perform the utterly useless 
task of removing these heavy stones for any useful or mis- 
chievous purpose. No town or even village has been built 
near, except a few houses in the present century. Any injury 
the walls have suffered must be by the hand of time. When, 
therefore, we see them partially standing, partly fallen — when 
we find the ground on each side of the walls blocked up with 
fragments, shapeless and weather-worn, with trunks of trees 
grown into and enlarging the intervals between two stones, 
and thus dislodging the upper ones — we may be sure that 
nature alone has operated. The result is that of the whole 
length of a great wall, originally not less than twelve feet wide 
and upwards of twenty feet high, there now remain only the 
lower stones. These are much interrupted by large gaps ; the 
stones that are still in their place are almost without exception 
pierced through and through with large holes, in which, when 
incomplete, plants will invariably be found. The stones most 
recently overthrown are now being broken up into small frag- 
ments by similar action, and in many cases the very rock itself 
