in ancient topography, artificial hillocks or mounts, met with in many parts of the world, intended as repositories for the dead, and formed either of stones heaped up, or of earth. For the former, more generally known by the name of cairns, see CAIRNS.—Of the latter Dr Plott takes notice of two forts in Oxfordshire: one placed on the military ways; the other in the fields, meadows, or woods; the first fort doubtless of Roman erection, the other more probably erected by the Britons or Danes. We have an examination of the barrows in Cornwall by Dr Williams, in the Phil. Trans. No. 458. from whose observations we find that they are composed of foreign or adventitious earth; that is, such as does not rise on the place, but is fetched from some distance.—Monuments of

he was a very early riser, a fierce mastiff, who used to be chained up all day, and let loose at night for the security of the house, perceiving a strange person in the garden at that unseasonable time, set upon him with great fury. The Doctor caught him by the throat, threw him, and lay upon him; and whilst he kept him down, considered what he should do in that exigence: once he had a mind to kill him; but he altered this resolution, upon recollecting that this would be unjust, since the dog did only his duty, and he himself was in fault for rambling out of his room before it was light. At length he called out so loud, that he was heard by some of the house, who came presently out, and freed the Doctor and the dog from the danger they were both in. of this kind are also very frequent in Scotland. On digging into the barrows, urns have been found in some of them, made of calcined earth, and containing burnt bones and ashes; in others, stone chests containing bones entire; in others, bones neither lodged in chests nor deposited in urns. These tumuli are round, not greatly elevated, and generally at their bases surrounded with a fosse. They are of different sizes; in proportion, it is supposed, to the greatness, rank, and power, of the deceased person. The links or sands of Skail, in Sandwich, one of the Orkneys, abound in round barrows. Some are formed of earth alone, others of stone covered with earth. In the former was found a coffin, made of six flat stones. They are too short to receive a body at full length: the skeletons found in them lie with the knees pressed to the breast, and the legs doubled along the thighs. A bag, made of rushes, has been found at the feet of some of these skeletons, containing the bones, most probably, of another of the family. In one were to be seen multitudes of small beetles; and as similar insects have been discovered in the bag which inclosed the sacred Ibis, we may suppose that the Egyptians, and the nation to whom these tumuli did belong, might have had the same superstition respecting them. Some of the corpses interred in this island, the mode of burning was observed. The ashes, deposited in an urn which was covered on the top with a flat stone, have been found in the cell of one of the barrows. This coffin or cell was placed on the ground, then covered with a heap of stones, and that again cased with earth and sods. Both barrow and contents evince them to be of a different age from the former. These tumuli were in the nature of family vaults: in them have been found two tiers of coffins. It is probable, that on the death of any one of the family, the tumulus was opened, and the body interred near its kindred bones.

Ancient Greece and Latium concurred in the same practice with the natives of this island. Patroclus among the Greeks, and Hector among the Trojans, received but the same funeral honours with our Caledonian heroes; and the ashes of Dercennus the Laurentine monarch had the same simple protection. The urn and pall of the Trojan warrior might perhaps be more superb than those of a British leader: the rising monument of each had the common materials from our mother earth.

The snowy bones his friends and brothers place, With tears collected, in a golden vase. The golden vase in purple palls they roll'd Of softest texture and inwrought with gold. Last o'er the urn the sacred earth they spread, And rais'd a tomb, memorial of the dead.

Pope's Homer's Iliad, xxiv. 1003.

Or, as it is more strongly expressed by the same elegant translator, in the account of the funeral of Patroclus;

High in the midst they heap the swelling bed Of rising earth, memorial of the dead. Ib. xxiii. 319.

The Grecian barrows, however, do not seem to have been all equally simple. The barrow of Alyattes, father of Croesus king of Lydia, is described by Herodotus as a most superb monument inferior only to the works of the Egyptians and Babylonians. It was a vast mound of earth heaped on a basement of large stones by three classes of the people; one of which was composed of girls, who were prostitutes. Alyattes died, after a long reign, in the year 562 before the Christian era. Above a century intervened, but the historian relates, that to his time five stones (termini or fleur) on which letters were engraved, had remained on the top, recording what each class had performed; and from the measurement it had appeared, that the greater portion was done by the girls. Strabo likewise has mentioned it as a huge mound raised on a lofty basement by the multitude of the city. The circumference was fix stadia or three quarters of a mile; the height two plethra or two hundred feet; and the width thirteen plethra. It was customary among the Greeks to place on barrows either the image of some animal or fleur, commonly round pillars with inscriptions. The famous barrow of the Athenians in the plain of Marathon, described by Pausanias, is an instance of the latter usage. An ancient monument in Italy by the Appian way, called without reason the sepulchre of the Curati, has the same number of termini as remained on the barrow of Alyattes; the basement, which is square, supporting five round pyramids—Of the barrow of Alyattes the apparent magnitude is described by travellers as now much diminished, and the bottom rendered wider and less distinct than before, by the gradual increase of the soil below. It stands in the midst of others by the lake Gyrgaeus; where the burying-place of the Lydian princes was situated. The barrows are of various sizes, the smaller made perhaps for children of the younger branches of the royal family. Four or five are distinguished by their superior magnitude, and are visible as hills at a great distance. That of Alyattes is greatly supereminent. The lake it is likely furnished the soil. All of them are covered with green turf; and all retain their conical form without any sinking in of the top.

similar tumuli, are also found in great numbers in America. These are of different sizes, according to Mr Jefferson's* account; some of them constructed of earth, and some of loose stones. That they were repositories of the dead has been obvious to all, but on what particular occasion constructed, was matter of doubt. Some have thought they covered the bones of those who have fallen in battles fought on the spot of interment. Some ascribed them to the custom said to prevail among the Indians, of collecting at certain periods the bones of all their dead, whereverover deposited at the time of death. Others again supposed them the general sepulchres for towns, conjectured to have been on or near these grounds; and this opinion was supported by the quality of the lands in which they are found (those constructed of earth being generally in the softest and most fertile meadow-grounds on river sides), and by a tradition said to be handed down from the aboriginal Indians, that when they settled in a town, the first person who died was placed erect, and earth put about him, so as to cover and support him; that when another died, a narrow passage was dug to the first, the second reclined against him, and the cover of earth replaced, and so on. "There being one of these barrows in my neighbourhood (says Mr Jefferson), I wished to satisfy myself whether any, and which of

* Notes on the State of Virginia, p. 156. these opinions were just. For this purpose I determined to open and examine it thoroughly. It was situated on the low grounds of the Rappahannock, about two miles above its principal fork, and opposite to some hills, on which had been an Indian town. It was of a spheroidal form, of about 40 feet diameter at the base, and had been of about 12 feet altitude, though now reduced by the plough to seven and a half, having been under cultivation about a dozen years. Before this it was covered with trees of twelve inches diameter, and round the base was an excavation of five feet depth and width, from whence the earth had been taken of which the hillock was formed. I first dug superficially in several parts of it, and came to collections of human bones, at different depths, from six inches to three feet below the surface. These were lying in the utmost confusion, some vertical, some oblique, some horizontal, and directed to every point of the compass, entangled, and held together in clutters by the earth. Bones of the most distant parts were found together; as, for instance, the small bones of the foot in the hollow of a skull, many skulls would sometimes be in contact, lying on the face, on the side, on the back, top or bottom, so as on the whole to give the idea of bones emptied promiscuously from a bag or basket, and covered over with earth, without any attention to their order. The bones of which the greatest numbers remained, were skulls, jaw-bones, teeth, the bones of the arms, thighs, legs, feet, and hands. A few ribs remained, some vertebrae of the neck and spine, without their processes, and one instance only of the bone which serves as a base to the vertebral column. The skulls were so tender, that they generally fell to pieces on being touched. The other bones were stronger. There were some teeth which were judged to be smaller than those of an adult; a skull which, on a flight view, appeared to be that of an infant, but it fell to pieces on being taken out, so as to prevent satisfactory examination; a rib, and a fragment of the under-jaw of a person about half-grown; another rib of an infant; and part of the jaw of a child, which had not yet cut its teeth. This last furnishing the most decisive proof of the burial of children here, I was particular in my attention to it. It was part of the right half of the under-jaw. The processes by which it was articulated to the temporal bones were entire; and the bone itself firm to where it had been broken off, which, as nearly as I could judge, was about the place of the eye-tooth. Its upper edge, wherein would have been the sockets of the teeth, was perfectly smooth. Measuring it with that of an adult, by placing their hinder processes together, its broken end extended to the penultimate grinder of the adult. This bone was white, all the others of a sand colour. The bones of infants being soft, they probably decay sooner, which might be the cause so few were found here. I proceeded then to make a perpendicular cut through the body of the barrow, that I might examine its internal structure. This passed about three feet from its centre, was opened to the former surface of the earth, and was wide enough for a man to walk through and examine its sides. At the bottom, that is, on the level of the circumjacent plain, I found bones; above these a few stones, brought from a cliff a quarter of a mile off, and from the river one-eighth of a mile off; then a large interval of earth, then a stratum of bones, and so on. At one end of the section were four strata of bones plainly distinguishable; at the other, three; the strata in one part not ranging with those in another. The bones nearest the surface were least decayed. No holes were discovered in any of them, as if made with bullets, arrows, or other weapons. I conjectured that in this barrow might have been a thousand skeletons. Every one will readily seize the circumstances above related, which militate against the opinion that it covered the bones only of persons fallen in battle; and against the tradition also which would make it the common sepulchre of a town, in which the bodies were placed upright, and touching each other. Appearances certainly indicate that it has derived both origin and growth from the accustomed collection of bones, and deposition of them together; that the first collection had been deposited on the common surface of the earth, a few stones put over it, and then a covering of earth; that the second had been laid on this, had covered more or less of it in proportion to the number of bones, and was then also covered with earth, and so on. The following are the particular circumstances which give it this aspect. 1. The number of bones. 2. Their confused position. 3. Their being in different strata. 4. The strata in one part having no correspondence with those in another. 5. The different states of decay in these strata, which seem to indicate a difference in the time of inhumation. 6. The existence of infant bones among them. But on whatever occasion they may have been made, they are of considerable notoriety among the Indians: for a party passing, about thirty years ago, through the part of the country where this barrow is, went through the woods directly to it, without any instructions or enquiry; and having staid about it some time, with expressions which were construed to be those of sorrow, they returned to the high road, which they had left about half a dozen miles to pay this visit, and pursued their journey. There is another barrow, much resembling this in the low grounds of the South branch of Shenandoah, where it is crossed by the road leading from the Rock-fish gap to Staunton. Both of these have, within these dozen years, been cleared of their trees and put under cultivation, are much reduced in their height, and spread in width, by the plough, and will probably disappear in time. There is another on a hill in the blue ridge of mountains, a few miles north of Wood's gap, which is made up of small stones thrown together. This has been opened and found to contain human bones as the others do. There are also many others in other parts of the country."

Barrow, in the salt-works, are wicker-cages, almost in the shape of a sugar-loaf, wherein the salt is put to drain.