Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/339

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Chap. VII.
DOLMENS.
313

drawings represent, the integuments must have gone also, and if they were either rotted or reduced to dust, the skeleton must have collapsed and been found in a heap on the floor. It would be interesting to know how long, either in very dry or in moist places, the integuments would last so as to prevent this collapse before they were disturbed. No qualified person has yet given an opinion on such a subject, but the time could hardly extend to many centuries. But does the case really exist? are not all these queer skeletons merely the imaginings of enthusiastic antiquaries?

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116.
Dolmen at Axevalla. From Sjöborg.

Be this as it may, these elliptical and long rectangular dolmens, with their arrangement of cists and entrances in the centre of the longer side, seem so distinguished from those generally found in other countries as to mark another province. It seems scarcely open to doubt that the oval forms are the older, though what their age may be is not so clear, nor have any descriptions of their contents been published which would enable us to form distinct