believed all dolmens to be prehistoric, though all the circles and Bauta stones marking battle-fields were to him as essentially historic as any monuments in his country. From its appearance, the dolmen at Oroust may be of the same age as the Countless Stones at Aylesford, and if other monuments in the two countries could be compared with anything like precision, their forms and traditions might mutually throw great light on their real histories.
It is not only, however, from the analogies with similar monuments in this country, or from their bearing on their history, that the Scandinavian dolmens are interesting to us. They have forms and peculiarities of their own which are well worth studying. If materials existed for mastering these differences, their aggregate would make up a sum which would enable us to separate the Scandinavian group from the British, as we can our own from the French, and the French from that of Northern Germany. A great deal more must, however, be published, and in a more accurate form, before this can be done; but, whenever it is possible, it promises to afford most satisfactory results to ethnographical science. The problem is similar to that which was known to exist in reference to pointed Gothic architecture. That is now admitted to be a Celtic-French invention, but it was adopted by the Spaniards and Italians on the one hand, and by the Germans and ourselves on the other; although always with a difference. No antiquary would now for an instant hesitate in discriminating between an Italian and a German or between a Spanish and an English example, though the difference is so small that it can hardly be expressed in words, and must be carefully represented in order to be perceived. In like manner, the rude-stone style
