covered with trees. Now it appears a double-chambered, free-standing dolmen, described by Bateman, after the soil had been removed, as "exactly of the construction as the well-known Kit's Coty House."
The great chambered cairns with entrance passages were evidently family vaults, and often contained the osseous remains of several generations.
Burial mounds are called "cairns" when their constructive materials consist of small stones, and "barrows" when the material is ordinary soil; but not unfrequently both substances were used in the same mound— a small cairn being often found inside an earthen barrow. Their great diversity in appearance and form gave rise to a number of qualifying epithets, such as "long," "round," "oval," "bell-shaped," etc. Sometimes the mound was surrounded by a ditch, or a stone circle, or by both; and instances are on record in which both these accessories were within the area covered by the mound. In the event of no mound being raised over an interment made in the ground there may be no indication whatever of its presence. This is a condition often met with in the case of urn cemeteries of later times. In burials by inhumation the grave was frequently marked by a standing stone, or a circle of earth or stones. As inhumation and cremation were practised simultaneously, both methods may be found in the same mound.
