44 
NATURE NOTES 
the modern churchyard headstone, a development well illustrated 
in a series of drawings shown in the Rev. S. Baring-Gould’s 
“ Book of Dartmoor.” This evolution, particularly in France, 
was rendered gradual by the employment, during the early 
Christian era and onwards, of a shaped menhir or “ lech,” which 
was surmounted by a cross. 
A number of menhirs placed in a direct line gives us the 
alignment or stone row. This type of British monument exists 
chiefly in Devon, Cumberland, and Caithness. Mr. Baring- 
Gould reckons fifty stone-rows on Dartmoor, and states that 
they usually start in cairns or mounds of stones and terminate 
in a “blocking” slab placed crosswise. In the Ernie valley, a 
line of upright blocks has been traced for 10,840 feet, though in 
one place the course swerves to avoid a precipitous bank. The 
grandest specimens of the alignment are admittedly not British, 
but are to be seen at Carnac, in the Breton department of the 
Morbihan, in North-western France. Eleven rows of pillars 
are there visible, and they extend, with a break here and there, 
for about four and a. half miles. In spite of wanton theft and 
spoliation, some 3,000 of the component monoliths are still left. 
Their height varies from 3 or 4 feet, the most common size, to 
12 or 13 feet; but one stone, now unfortunately recumbent and 
broken, is over twenty yards long. When we seek for their 
original purpose we find ourselves in a great difficulty, so 
numerous are the theories, or rather hypotheses, put forward. 
To these Carnac stones one might apply the lines borrowed 
from Sir Philip Sidney’s description of Stonehenge : — 
“ That neither any eye 
Can count them just, nor reason reason try 
What force them brought to so unlikely ground.” 
M. Zacharie le Rouzic, the Curator of the Museum founded at 
Carnac by that excellent Scotchman, James Miln, is of opinion 
that, whilst the alignments are of funereal origin, they are not 
actually tombs, or at most, only exceptionally so. Among other 
considerations, he urges that the stones have been erected at 
one time, not at intervals, and that they diminish in size towards 
the east. The most recent explanation, though scarcely satis- 
factory, is based upon comparative customs, observed among 
such peoples as the Bedouins and the Khassias of Brahmapootra, 
and teaches that the stones were set up by the members of a 
tribe after the burial of their chief. 
The next class of remains embraces cromlechs or “ curved 
stones,” a term which properly indicates upright stones 
arranged in a circle, although the name has been erroneously 
given to the succeeding group, the dolmens. Well-known 
cromlechs exist at Penmaenmawr , Portisham, in Dorset ; and 
Rollright, near the borders of Oxford and Warwick. The 
largest cromlech north of the Tweed is at Stennis, in Orkney. 
Most famous of all is Stonehenge, concerning the stones of which 
Pepys wrote, “ God knows what their use was. They are hard 
