1882.] 
Vegetable Soil » 
3?9 
surface of the ground. In Ireland the prehistoric people 
usually made the kistvean about 2 feet square and from 12 to 
15 inches high, the sole stone of the kistvean being on the 
subsoil, or slightly^ below its surface. Thus the structure 
originally was more or less above the surface ; but now, al- 
though above the surface of the adjoining ground, the 
kistveans are usually covered with soil which have evidently 
grown up and covered them, — often the work of ants, at 
other times nearly solely due to vegetable growth and decay. 
In this class of feartha the dead were burned, and their ashes 
placed in the kistveans either with or without urns, so that 
there were no great inducements for worms to congregate at 
such places ; but there are other feartha, like that at 
Mervinstown, near Dunlavin, Co. Wicklow, where unburned 
bodies were buried in the kistveans, which must have been 
an inducement for the worms to congregate and burrow below 
in the adjoining soil; yet in no place were the stones dis- 
placed and put out of gear by the worms burrowing under 
them. There are other prehistoric graves to be found on the 
west coast where the corpses were enveloped in sea shells. 
Sections of such graves may be seen in places where a stream 
or the sea — as at Ballinskellig, Co. Kerry — has cut away a 
portion of the graveyard ; but in no place that I have seen 
was the original bottom of the grave disturbed, the growth of 
soil above the grave having no connection with the removal 
of the soil or clay alongside or below it. 
While geologising the West Galway hills I had occasion, 
during the autumn of 1872, to walk along the grassy Silurian 
slopes between Maumturk and Leenaun, and my companion, 
as we went along, amused himself by rolling down the slopes 
the different surface stones : this was not, however, alto- 
gether useless work, as we wanted to learn the origin of 
certain accumulations of blocks in the bottom of the valleys. 
Some of the stones he could easily set rolling, while others 
I had to assist him with, which led me to observe that all 
the more or less buried stones had new or old ant-works 
alongside, while those that lay nearly on the surface had only 
worms and beetles under them. I should mention that these 
stones were stones that in the winter had been loosened by 
frost or other weathering from the cliffs above, and had lodged 
on their way down. As it is the general practice with the 
shepherds to set all the lodged stones “ a rolling,” in the 
spring, to “ clear the grass,” most of the stones we met with 
had not been there six months ; but some, that had the old 
ant-hills alongside, must have been there from the year be- 
fore. Such observations, then first made, have since made 
2 C 2 
