Among the largest talayots are those of Torre Ilafuda. They measure sixteen metres across the base and fourteen at the summit. The stones are laid horizontally and are carefully adjusted. The walls are three or four metres thick, and skilfully constructed. The interior usually forms a single chamber, and where this was large the roof was supported by a column formed of huge blocks of stone. The wall itself is often threaded by a passage to the roof or upper chamber, so narrow that it could only have been ascended by crawling. The entrance to the talayot is through a square opening large enough to permit a short man to walk through upright. All sorts of theories and guesses have been made as to what these towers originally were. Near every =T=-shaped altar one or two are to be found; there was always one at least on every town site. Perhaps, suggests our authority, they existed before all the other structures and were used as centres by a later population. Though they are often placed on eminences, it has been established that they were not fortresses; it can be proved more or less satisfactorily that they were not dwelling-places, storehouses, or tombs. The boat-shaped piles, called navetas or naves, on the other hand had clearly a sepulchral character. The front or prow is slightly concave. The entrance measures about half a metre across and three-quarters of a metre in height, the edges are grooved as though to admit some sort of door. Inside, the passage widens and conducts you to a second opening as narrow as the first, through which you penetrate into the mortuary chamber itself. Filled now with rubbish, filth and carrion, these are the tombs of the fathers of the Mediterranean races, whose bones are brought to light each time the Menorcan ploughs his stubborn soil. Stones must always have been a plague to the people of the island, and this, besides accounting for their selection of the sling as their peculiar weapon, may partially explain, as Ford reasonably remarks, the abundance of these monuments. “The erection of a large tumulus was not a piece of barbaric extravagance. It provided an unperishable monument for the person it was intended to honour (?) and it got rid of an immense mass of loose stone which greatly impeded agriculture.” “One fact,” adds this lively writer, “is very curious. The Menorcans, even now, are in the habit of constructing just such tumuli as the talayots for the use of their cattle, though of smaller stones. In the distance they present an appearance not at all unlike the older structures.” * * * * *