Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/211

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ALIGNMENTS
203

world. The Menec monoliths extend in eleven lines for nearly a couple of miles, where, after a little break, they are supposed to have been continuous with the Kermario group. The only stone monument in England that can be at all paralleled with Carnac alignments is at Ashdown, in the Vale of the White Horse (Berks). Here the stones, numbering about 800, are grouped in three divisions and extend over an irregular parallelogram for 500 to 600 yards in length, and about half that in breadth. Sir Henry Dryden describes several, but smaller, groups in Caithness, as at Garrywhin, Camster, Yarhouse and the "Many Stones" at Clyth (Fergusson, Rude Stone Monuments, p. 529). In Britain alignments are more frequently met with in single or double rows leading to, or from, other megalithic monuments which still, or formerly, existed, such as the avenues at Avebury, Stonehenge, Dartmoor, Shap, Callernish, etc. At St. Colomb, in Cornwall, there is a single row, called the "Nine Maidens," which consists of eight quartz stones extending in a perfectly straight line for 262 feet.

Rocking-stones.—Just on the borderland between the works of Nature and Art comes the so-called Rocking-stone, or Logan-stone, which is usually nothing more than an ice-transported boulder, poised so nicely on its rocky bed that gentle pressure by the hand may cause it to rock, or oscillate. Some of these stones had the pivot-like prominence on