been able to explain how they delivered their oracles. A certain push produced an oscillation, not fitful or irregular, but always in proportion to the force applied; so the answer must always have been the same and alike to all people. A still more important fact is that nowhere do the people appeal to them now. Neither at the Beltane nor at Halloween, nor at any of those festivals where country people revive every extinct superstition to aid them in prying into futurity, are these rocking stones appealed to; and it seems almost impossible that, when so many other superstitions have survived, this one should be lost, and lost in presence of the rocks themselves, which still remain. Wonders they certainly are, but I question much if they ever were appealed to for any higher purpose than that of extracting sixpences from the pockets of gaping tourists.
Carnac.
In a zone about twenty miles in extent, stretching from Erdeven on the north-west to Tumiac in a south-easterly direction, and nowhere more than five miles in width, there is to be found the most remarkable group of megalithic remains, not only in France, but perhaps in the whole world. Not only are examples of every class of monument we have been describing, except circles, to be found here, but they are larger and finer examples than are generally to be met with elsewhere. Another point of interest also is that within the zone are found—if I am not mistaken—both a cemetery and a battle-field. At least in the neighbourhood of Locmariaker, which there seems no reason for doubting was the Dariorigum of the Romans, the capital of the Venetes in Cæsar's times,[1] all the monuments are more or less sculptured, and all the stones fashioned, not to say hewn. On the other hand, no stone in the neighbourhood of Carnac is hewn, or even fashioned, beyond splitting, and no sculptures of any class have been traced. The distinction is too marked to be accidental, and unless it can be made out that they belong to different ages, which appears to me most improbable, goes far to establish the conclusion at which we have arrived in previous chapters.
- ↑ 'Ptolemæi Geo.' Amstel. 1605, p. 47.
