The modern sexton, having filled up the grave, banks up the surplus soil in the form of a long, neatly-finished mound. Is there any obvious reason why he should do this, instead of spreading out the remaining earth until all is level? The explanation of positive necessity is not admissible: I have noticed one churchyard in which mounds are not raised, just as, in two or three other instances, all the tombstones are laid in a horizontal position. The popular belief, if it is found to exist, ascribes the mound to an economical cause--the advantage of banking up some soil to prevent the shallow depression which is the after result of subsidence. But this does not account for the oblong mound with curved ends--a shape which does not altogether correspond with that of the pit which is being closed. Nor does it explain the careful turfing-over which sometimes follows, nor the masonry or coped tombstone which is frequently designed to preserve the accepted form of the mound. The only satisfactory answer to the question, so far as competent authorities have yet discovered, is that the modern grave-mound is the shrunken representative of the long barrow, the features having been retained because of the inertia of social custom, and because inveterate imitation is easier than new experiment. It is noteworthy that the modern mound is often so large as to be unsightly. The size is especially increased in places where, as in the little Huguenot burying ground at Wandsworth, the pile is surmounted by a “box” tomb of brick or stone. (These mounds are not, however, comparable in size to that of Chislehurst, p. 76 _supra_.) To the late Mr Grant Allen belongs, I believe, the chief credit for the barrow theory, the conclusion having been forced upon him by long study of the comparative burial customs of primitive folk[636]. Thomas Wright had earlier classed the Saxon barrow as the prototype of the modern grave-mound; and, in the eighteenth century, Hearne had remarked, concerning tumuli and churchyards: “But now the straitness of [churchyards] will not permit such _aggeres consecratos_, as some terme them, to be made there.”