south-east; others say towards the south-west." This serves alike for burning or burial. Then in his Sixth Appendix' the Professor gives rules for Vedic burial collected by Rajendralal Mitra from other Sûtras. Here the road from the house to the burning ground is said to be divided into three stages; the urn containing the burnt remains to be surrounded with brick bats and covered with a mound, around which finally a few holes are dug. It seems to me that this passage contains hints which may be worth considering the importance, for example, attached to the burial path; the direction of the place of interment from the place of decease; and the setting apart the burial ground by an imperfect cincture. Where stones were scarce a circle of holes would be more easily formed, and be quite as symbolical as a ring of stones. Then again we find that among the Khassia tribe, in India, in the present day, menhirs are erected to the memory of dead ancestors who are supposed to have answered prayer, the number corresponding to the estimation in which they are held. So, too, it is a well known custom to honour the memory of deceased friends by adding stones to their cairns. CONCLUSION. Without attempting to enter too closely into detail, it appears to me, therefore, that these stone rows are purely sepulchral; that the burial places with which they are connected are those of people in their day of position and authority; and that the length of the rows and the number of the stones indicate with more or less precision the number of what I may call active mourners, the leading members of the tribe or family, or perhaps, in Highland phrase, "the chieftain and his tail." Whether the multiplication of the rows had any special meaning, or whether it was not rather a matter of convenience, is a question which probably never will be solved (though Cosdon certainly suggests the connection with separate interments, and possibly Coryndon likewise); but we shall have reached fairly definite conclusions if we can get to look upon the circle, with its barrow or kistvaen, and appendant row or rows, as representing heads and their following, whether the family tie is distinctly indicated or not. Hence there may be so much in Mr. Fergusson's battle 7 pp. 436 et seq. theory as would enable us to regard the standing stones at Carnac, as such memorials to leaders who fell in conflict on a site where the abundant traces of interment may fairly lead us to infer that great slaughter must have taken place; but I do not think we can assume that each stone is itself a personal memorial-the kist or circle containing the dead chief, and every stone in the row commemorating a fallen follower. Victories so commemorated must have been worse than defeats. Perhaps it will help advocates of the sacred circle idea to look with more favour on my hypothesis if they will regard the larger circles as the burial places perchance of a household or sept, rather than of an individual-nay, even of a tribe. And in that connection I would direct their attention to a passage in a Saxon MS. referring to Avebury, "along the stone row [Kennet avenue], thence to the burial place," with which burial place it is hardly possible to avoid identifying the Avebury Circles. Moreover, at least a dozen kistvaens were found within one circle in the Isle of Man. THE BOUNDS OF THE FOREST OF DARTMOOR. BY ARTHUR B. PROWSE, M.D. LOND., F.R.C.S. ENG. (Read at Plymouth, July, 1892.) IN volume i. of the Dartmoor Preservation Association's publications, page xii., Mr. Birkett quotes Manwood, who wrote about 1600 as follows: "It doth not appear, either by histories or records, when the old Forests in England were made; and as ancient are the Forest Laws." Though Dartmoor is not mentioned in Domesday Book, the borough of Lydford was then held by the king, and it is nearly certain that then, as now, the moor was, to a large extent, attached in some way to Lydford. King John's charter for disafforesting all Devonshire except Dartmoor and Exmoor was dated 1204; but it is doubtful whether the terms of the charter were then carried out, for no written record of a perambulation of the "metes and bounds" at that time has been found. By the "Forest Laws" a solemn perambulation of the ancient bounds, in pursuance of a writ from the Crown, was a necessary preliminary to disafforestation; and in disafforesting the rest of the county the bounds of the Forest of Dartmoor would necessarily have been defined. In 1239 Henry III. granted to Richard, his brother, "all that our Manor of Lydford with the castle of the same place and all its appurtenances together with the Forest of Dartmoor and all the appurtenances of the same Forest": and this is the first time that a manor of Lydford and the Forest are mentioned in connection with each other. The first perambulation of which we have a record was made in 1240, probably in pursuance of a statute of 1224, in which it is said, "All Forests which King Henry our grandfather afforested and made shall be viewed by good and lawful men, and if he hath made Forest of any other wood than of his own demesne whereby the owner of the wood hath hurt we |