such remains would soon be reduced to mere gravel; besides which, we must remember that on our Southern or Eastern shores, even in historical times, the sea has encroached greatly. "Flintfinds," however, resembling in many respects these Danish "coastfinds," are not altogether unknown in this country. A great number of flint flakes, with a few arrows and cores, were found some years ago by Mr. Shelley in a field near Reigate, but, so far as I am aware, no other forms have yet been observed at this place.

In the Aberdeen Journal (October, 1863), Mr. T. F. Jamieson mentions a spot on the banks of the Ythan below Ellon, where in a few minutes he filled his "pockets with flint flakes, abortive arrow-heads, flint blocks from which the flakes have been struck off, and other such nondescript articles of ancient cutlery." There are other places, as, for instance, Bridlington, Pont le Voy, Spiennes, near Mons, Pressigny le Grand, etc., where immense numbers of rude hatchets, cores, flakes, spear-heads, etc., have been found. Now that our attention has been called to these flintfinds, no doubt many similar discoveries will be made elsewhere.

CHAPTER IV.

TUMULI.

Α'

LL over Europe; we might indeed say, all over the

world, wherever they have not been destroyed by the plough or the hammer; we find relics of pre-historic timescamps, fortifications, dykes, temples, tumuli, etc.; many of which astonish us by their magnitude, while all of them excite our interest by the antiquity of which they remind us, and the mystery with which they are surrounded. Some

few, indeed, there are, such, for instance, as the Roman Wall in England, the Dannevirke, and Queen Thyra's tumulus, in Denmark, of which the date and origin are known to us, but

by far the greater number, such as the Wansdyke, the

"temple" of Carnac in Brittany, the tumuli supposed to be those of Thor, Odin, and Freya at Upsala, and the great

FIG. 98.

*

them, doubtless, belong to the metallic period, some to that of Stone, but it very rarely happens that we can attribute any of them with reasonable probability to one period rather than to another. This is particularly the case with ancient

earthworks and megalithic temples or circles; the barrows, or Lows, on the other hand, frequently contain objects from which some idea of relative antiquity may be obtained. These ancient burial-mounds, of which several

typical examples are represented in figs. 96 to 100, are extremely numerous. In our own island they may be seen on almost every down; in the Orkneys alone it is

estimated that more than two thousand still remain; and in Denmark they are even more abundant; they are found all over Europe, from the shores of the Atlantic to the Oural mountains; in Asia they are scattered over the great steppes, from the borders of Russia to the Pacific Ocean, and from the plains of Siberia to those of Hindostan; in America we are told that they are to be numbered by thousands and tens of thousands; nor are they wanting in Africa, where the Pyramids themselves exhibit the most magnificent development of the same idea; so that the whole world is studded with these burial places of the dead. The Cromlechs, Dolmens, and Cistvaens (fig. 99), are now generally regarded as sepulchral, and the great number in which these ancient burial places occur is very suggestive of their antiquity, since the labor involved in the construction of a tumulus would not be undertaken except in honor of chiefs and great men. Many of them are small, but some are very large; Silbury Hill, the highest in Great Britain, has a height of one hundred and seventy feet; but though evidently artificial, there is great doubt whether it is sepulchral.

Mr. Bateman, in the Preface to his second work,* has collected together the most ancient allusions to burial ceremonies, and we see that "Mound-burial" was prevalent in the earliest times of which we have any historical record. Achan and his whole family were stoned with stones and burned with fire, after which we are told that Israel "raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger." Again, the king of Ai was buried under a great heap of stones.

According to Diodorus, Semiramis, the widow of Ninus, buried her husband within the precincts of the palace, and raised over him a great mound of earth. Some of the • Ten Years' Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Gravehills.