Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/639

Rh fragments of stone implements and pottery and some Gallo-Roman objects, all of which have been probably lost or accidentally introduced into the soil near the monuments. These monuments then are apparently not tombs nor in any way sepulchral. There would appear to be little doubt that the alignments and cromlechs are a sort of temple, the alignments with the avenues between being comparable to the columns and the aisles of a cathedral, and the cromlech at the end to the altar or inner sanctuary.

At Avebury and Stonehenge the interments have been made in barrows near the cromlechs; within three miles of Stonehenge, as has been mentioned, are over three hundred of these barrows, which have

yielded interesting relics to the excavations and efforts of investigators. The cromlechs themselves, here as elsewhere, are evidently temples. There seems to be no trace of any alignments at Stonehenge, but in their place is the double circle, the inner composed of smaller stones being considered the original, and the outer and more striking, much more recent. Avebury had originally two double rows of menhirs leading to it from opposite sides, but few of these stones now remain. Avebury differs from Stonehenge and the cromlechs of Morbihan in several important particulars. It consists mainly of a great circular earthwork within which is a ditch or sort of dry moat, containing twenty-eight and one half acres. Inside the ditch was the principal