two, being supported on each side by a low dry wall. The position of this stone is precisely of similar ar

rangement to that of the cromlech in the county of Kilkenny, Ireland, described and figured in vol. xvi. of the Archæologia, another at Brownstone, co. Carlow, figured in Higgens's "Celtic Druids," p. 1, and also of that at Mol-fra, in Cornwall, as shewn in the model in the British Museum, and was evidently placed designedly in that position for sacrificial purposes. The sloping position is ascribed to the inclined plane of the altar of holocaust in the temple of Solomon . Shelving or sloping altars are noticed in King's Munimenta Antiqua, vol. iii. p. 230. Another dry wall filled up the space between the two perpendicular stones.

Beneath these were discovered a quantity of bones of animals, and the teeth of horses, tusks of boars, and jaws of calves, the three animals (if we may judge by their appearing so frequently on the reverses of the British coins) held as sacred by the Britons 8.

b Trevithy stone, figured in frontispiece to Britton and Brayley, "Beauties of England and Wales," vol. ii.

c Mahè, p. 26.

e The swine, Isaiah lvi. 17.

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d The horses of the sun. f The calves of Bethaven.

.g A horse was one of the most usual symbols of Noah, and a mare of the ark. The sun, therefore, united with the horse, is no other than

At this part of the tumulus, I remarked the total absence of all human bones, but moistened powdered charcoal was found in some quantity. This would appear to have been the high altar upon which the victims were offered up. These altars are usually called cromlechs, (, Cherim luach, 'devoted stone, or altar,') and though often confused by writers with the kistvaens or sepulchres, are totally distinct, as we shall see presently i.

Cromlechs and kistvaens are found in many parts of the country without any mounds; but I conceive they have all been originally covered, but that the utilitarian

the great solar patriarch, while his consort is merely the hippa, or ark."--Faber's Cabiri, vol. i. p. 100.

The British horse cut out of the chalk-hill in Berks., commonly called White Horse Hill, is doubtless of vast antiquity. It is in the immediate vicinity of that kistvaen, or remnant of a long-barrow, called Wayland Smith's cave, and of Ash down, the place of gathering, possibly, of the Aswi or Ashwi, the children of the horse.'

The Tauric Neptune, or Poseidon, identified with Noah, was represented under the forms of a horse and a bull. The boar was also symbolical of Noah, and a sow of the ark. Vishnu was feigned to have been metamorphosed into a boar; and the nurse of the Arkite Jupiter, or in other words the Noetic ship, is said by Agathocles (Apul. Athen. Deipnosoph., lib. ix. p. 375) to have been a sow.

The White Horse in Berkshire has been assigned to the Saxon times by some antiquaries, as commemorative of the battles of Hengist and Horsa, whose emblem it is said to have been; but I cannot help thinking that any one who compares the figure cut out on the chalk-hill with the figures of horses on the British coins, long antecedent to our Saxon invasion, would be convinced of the identity. It is far from improbable that the early Saxons venerated the horse upon the same grounds as our British forefathers.

h Rowland's Mona Antiqua, p. 47.

i I find that Olaus Wormius has remarked upon the difference between the cromlech and the kistvaen in terms nearly similar.

requirements of the soil or stones with which they were covered have caused the covering material to be removed.

Our next investigation was made at the northern shoulder of the mound; and here we came to a sepulchral chamber, or kistvaen, formed by seven large upright unhewn stones, with a paved floor, covered at the

Form of the Northern Chamber.

Form of the Southern Chamber.

N.B. The dotted line indicates the covering-stones.

top by a vast single stone, measuring nearly 9 ft. by 8 ft., about 18 in. thick, and weighing probably eight or nine tons.

This chamber was approached by a very narrow passage, enclosed by dwarf dry walls on either side. The entrance was closed nearly up to the roof by a barrier formed by two stones placed side by side upright in the ground, each hollowed out in the centre in a semi-oval shape by nature and not by art, and selected evidently for this purpose, together forming a sort of port-hole of an oval shape, similar to that which appears in the chambered tumulus at Avening opened in 1809, and described and figured in vol. xvi. of the Archæologia. This opening, again, was closed up by another upright stone placed in front of it, which we had to remove before we could gain access to the chamber.