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Chap. VIII. immediately after their departure, but prior to the conversion of the natives to Christianity. We are not yet in a position to decide positively between these two hypotheses, but the presence of Roman coins and Roman tiles in some of the mounds and the whole aspect of the argument seem to me to incline the balance in favour of their belonging to Roman times. Some may be anterior to the Christian era, but I am very much mistaken if it be not eventually admitted that the greater number of them are subsequent to that epoch.

Even, however, if the age of the monuments of the cemetery of Locmariaker could be ascertained, it would by no means necessarily carry with it that of the stone rows at Carnac. They belong to a different category altogether, and may be of a different age.

No one now, I presume, after what has been said above, especially with regard to the Scandinavian examples, will think it necessary that I should go over the ground to prove that they are not temples. Every argument that could be adduced to prove that Avebury or Stonehenge are not temples tells with tenfold force here. A temple extending over six or seven miles of country is more improbable than one covering only 28 acres. This one, too, is open everywhere, and has no enclosure or "temenos" of any sort, and there being an uneven number of equally spaced rows of stones in the principal monument is sufficient to show it was not intended and could not be used for processions. In fact I hardly know of any proposition that appears to me so manifestly absurd as that these stone rows were temples, and I feel sure that no one who thinks twice of the matter will venture again to affirm it.

It seems equally clear that they were not erected for any civic or civil purpose. No meetings could be held, and no administrative functions could be carried on in or around them. Nor are they sepulchral in any ordinary sense of the term. In the first place because, though men were buried in tumuli or under dolmens, or had single head-stones, nowhere were men buried in rows like this, extending over miles of heath and barren country. But the great fact is that the French savants have dug repeatedly about these stones and found no trace of burials. The most