former, death was the mere portal to the community of departed heroes and friends, to which they looked forward across the span of human life with hopeful anticipation of a more perfect state of existence. Hence the abodes of the dead were considered of greater importance than those of the living. One of the most common and effective methods of perpetuating the memory of a departed friend was to rear a mound of stones or earth over the grave. As an alternative to a mound the site of the grave was occasionally marked by the construction of some surface arrangement, such as menhirs, stone circles, alignments, ditches, etc. To these customs we owe some of the grandest monuments in the world's history—the Pyramids of Egypt, the topes and dagobas of India, the mighty mounds of Silbury and New Grange, the megalithic circles of Stonehenge and Avebury, together with the numberless rude stone monuments known as dolmens, cromlechs, standing stones, etc., scattered along the western shores of Europe from Scandinavia to Africa. Although a strong family likeness permeates the whole series of these sepulchral monuments, they differ so widely in certain districts as to form, structure, position and contents, that to make a systematic classification of them, on the lines of their chronological development, would be an impossible task. One special element which complicates such an inquiry was the custom of cremating the dead, which appears to have originated in Eastern lands
