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from any habitations. Within thirty yards of it, to the south, there is a low barrow, enclosed by a circle of small stones; it is quite round, and 18 feet in diameter. There are several

such around here, not far from the circles, all partaking of the same type. Most of them have been disturbed. The Strathspey Gaelic name for these stone circles and cairns is "Na carrachan,' which implies a nominative singular "car," evidently from the

same root as cairn.

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The examination and study of these Inverness-shire circles and rude stone monuments raise the most important questions as to the intention and the plan of construction of stone circles. The three concentric circles seem developed, architecturally speaking, from the chamber cairn, encircled at its base, and with another circle at a distance. The next step would seem to have been the ring cairn. Possibly the reason for the ring cairn may consist in the fact that the builders could not, on their bee-hive system, and with the stones they used, as seen in the chambered cairns at Clava, construct chambers on so large a diameter as all the undoubted ring cairns have in their innermost circle, such as those of Clava, Gask, Grainish, and Delfoor, all of which are over 20 feet in diameter. The third step might have been to drop the building of the ring cairn, which would thus leave the three concentric circles, so peculiar in their character, in that they have a middle circle evidently designed for forming an outer ring intended to bound a cairn so as to keep it together. Druid Temple at Leys, Inverness, presents a good example of stone circles evidently not completed by cairn of any kind, and yet having traces of avenue, which so few of them have. It also shows the state of preservation in which the ravages of time and the last century or two of stone-building have left these monuments of a remote antiquity.

In regard to the purpose of building these structures, the answer which the interrogation of them gives to the inquirer depends mainly on his individual theories. The construction of the central and middle circle, I believe, is developed from the chambered cairn, but it is in regard to the outer circle that the real difficulty exists. What is the purpose of it? The chambered cairns are, by most antiquarians, connected with burial, though other theories, as we shall see, are held. In any case, burial

deposits and urns were found in the Clava chambered cairns, a fact which connects them somehow with burial. It does not appear that the other circles have been yet scientifically explored; at any rate burial deposits have not been found except in the

doubtful instances of Druid Temple and Gask. An urn was found in a gravel cutting near the former, and bits of bone have been found in the debris which lies in the interior of the latter.

In Ireland, besides the famous mound of New Grange, with its surrounding circle of monoliths, and the several other mounds on the Boyne, where, according to old Irish history, repose the fairy heroes of Ireland's golden age--the Dagda and his compeers, in whom modern research recognises the old deities of the Gaelbesides these there are the "battlefields" of the two Moyturas, the "tower fields" as the name means, which are literally strewn with circles, mounds, and stones. The stone circles here are often alone, and often in connection with the mounds, cairns, and dolmens. It was on these Moytura plains that the fairy heroes overcame their foes of ocean and of land-the Fomorians and the Fir-bolgs; so Irish history says, and the dates of these events are only some nineteen centuries before our era! In England, several good specimens of stone circles still remain in the remote districts, districts such as Cornwall and Cumberland; they are often single circles unattended by any other structure; but there is a tendency toward their existing in groups, some circles intersecting one another even-such groups as at Botallick in Cornwall, Stanton Drew in Somersetshire, and others. The most famous stone monuments in England, or in these Isles, are those of Stonehenge and Avebury. The remains at Avebury, from the immense size of the outer circle (1200 feet) and its external rampart, its remains of two sets of contiguous circles, each set being formed of two concentric rings of stones, and its two remarkable avenues of stone, each of more than a mile in length, the one winding to the south-east, the other to the south-west-these remains have brought Avebury into rivalry with Stonehenge, with which it contests the honour of having been, as some think, vaguely heard of by the Greeks before the Christian era. Stonehenge, however, though much less in extent its outer circle is only 100 feet in diameter, which is just about the average of the outer circles of Inverness-shire is much better preserved and much better known. It differs in various ways from the usual type of circles and their accompaniments, though preserving the general features. In the first place the stones are "dressed so far as to render them more suitable for contact with, or superimposition of, other stones. Stonehenge is therefore not quite a "rude stone monument." This dressing of the stones was connected with another, though less unique, feature of these circles. This is what is known as the trilithons. These are composed of two upright pillar stones set

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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

somewhat apart, with another stone passing on the top from the one to the other. The trilithon is common in Asiatic monuments but not in European, and Mr Fergusson is of opinion that, architecturally, it is only an improved dolmen, standing on two legs instead of four. An earthen vallum surrounded the outer circle at a distance from it of 100 feet. The outer circle itself was 100 feet in diameter, and consisted originally of thirty square piers, spaced tolerably equally; but only twenty-six of these can now be identified, in whole or part. They were, evidently, all connected by a continuous stone impost or architrave, of which only six are now in position. Passing over the smaller and more doubtful second circle, we come to the five great trilithons, the plan and position of which are now quite settled. Their height is from 16 to 21 feet high. They form a horse-shoe plan, two pairs on each side, and one pair at the middle of the bend. Inside this inner circle or horse-shoe are ten or eleven stones, more or less in situ; they are of igneous rock, such as is not to be found nearer than Cornwall or even Ireland. The highest is over 7 feet, but the others are generally smaller. They seem to go in pairs about 3 feet apart, and may have formed the supports of trilithons. Between the outer circle and the great trilithons there are the remains of another circle of stone, some 5 feet high, and if it was complete-which is doubtful, it would consist of over forty stones, of which only some sixteen remain. Within the inner horse-shoe there is a stone in a recumbent position, called the "Altar" stone, but whether its proper place was here or elsewhere we cannot now say. Excavations inside the Stonehenge circles have led to no satisfactory conclusion, because they were instituted too long ago, first in 1620; and, though bones and armour are mentioned, we cannot say whether the bones were human or the armour of iron. Fragments of Roman and British pottery have been found in it; but the best antiquaries are of opinion that the circles belong to the Bronze Age, and to a late period even in it. Bronze Age barrows surround it, belonging, as is shown by the chippings of the igneous stone of the inmost circle, to the same age as the megalithic monument itself. But there are also barrows of older tribes around and near it. "There are indications," says Mr Elton, "that the people of the Bronze Age were the actual constructors of the temple on a site which had previously been selected as a burial-ground for the chieftains of the Neolithic tribes."

The only other stone circles I shall allude to, are those of Palestine and Arabia, and of these I shall speak only of those of

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