ners or angular figures are the tombs of
horsemen or foot-soldiers, and more especially of those fighters whose
party had triumphed. All this is quite clear, but Olaues Magnus has
forgotten to tell us how two cousins who killed each other in a duel on
horseback could have been buried. The fact of the duel required that the
stones be straight; the relationship required that they be circular; but
as the men were horsemen, it seems as if the stones ought to have been
arranged squarely, though this rule, it is true, was not formal, as it
was applied only to those whose party had triumphed. O good Olaues
Magnus! You must have liked Monte-Pulciano exceeding well! And how many
draughts of it did it take for you to acquire all this wonderful
knowledge?

According to a certain English doctor named Borlase, who had observed
similar stones in Cornouailles, "they buried soldiers there, in the very
place where they died." As if, usually, they were carted to the
cemetery! And he builds his hypothesis on the following comparison:
their graves are on a straight line, like the front of an army on plains
that were the scene of some great action.

Then they tried to bring in the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Cochin
Chinese! There is a Karnac in Egypt, they said, and one on the coast of
Brittany. Now, it is probable that this Karnac descends from the
Egyptian one; it is quite certain! In Egypt they are sphinxes; here they
are rocks; but in both instances they are of stone. So it would seem
that the Egyptians (who never travelled), came to this coast (of the
existence of which they were ignorant), founded a colony (they never
founded any), and left these crude statues (they produced such beautiful
ones), as a positive proof of their sojourn in this country (which
nobody mentions).

People fond of mythology thought them the columns of Hercules; people
fond of natural history thought them a representation of the python,
because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on the road
from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and
especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities
of a serpent. People fond of cosmography discovered a zodiac, like M. de
Cambry, who recognised in those eleven rows of stones the twelve signs
of the zodiac, "for it must be stated," he adds, "that the ancient Gauls
had only eleven signs to the zodiac."

Subsequently, a member of the Institute conjectured that it might