It has been hitherto supposed that in all these cases they were sepulchral monuments, but it has been recently suggested that those alone beneath the cairns may have served this purpose, and those which were free standing or on cairns may have been used as altars. The basis for this conjecture consists in the fact that the flat covering stones of the Syrian dolmens are very often provided with cups or hollows, which may have served to hold sacrificial oil; and, moreover, the free standing dolmens are often on smooth rock, so that it would not be possible to inter a body beneath them. I have seen the covering slab to be as large as eleven feet long by five wide, though those in the field I was now examining were much smaller, some of the covering stones not being above five feet by three or four; this was probably owing to their being of basalt, which is much heavier than ordinary stone. Nearly all were trilithons, the covering slab being sometimes held in position by pebbles inserted under it; and in many instances they appeared to have a slight slant which was not the result of accident. The natives here call them “Jews' burial-grounds,” showing that the local tradition is in favor of their being sepulchral monuments, though it is very certain they date from a period long anterior to the Jews. Indeed, the probability is that the disappearance of these monuments from western Palestine, where they no doubt existed, is due to the command to destroy heathen monuments. Thus, in Deuteronomy, we find again and again repeated injunctions to overthrow the Canaanite altars, and to break or smash their pillars. These exhortations we find carried into practice by Hezekiah and Josiah in Judea, and as the Book of Deuteronomy was held sacred by the ten tribes as well as by the two, we are justified in supposing that they carried out the order in Samaria and Galilee. But the land to the east of the Jordan always contained a mixed population, over which the kings of Israel and Judah exercised but little control. Baal worship was rife in Bashan, Gilead, and Moab in the days of Jeremiah, and the reforming zeal of Hezekiah did not affect the land where Chemosh and Ishtar, Baal, Peor, Nebo, and Meni yet continued to be worshipped. This accounts for dolmens not having been found, except with a few doubtful specimens, in Galilee to the west of the Jordan. With the exception of the roughly excavated hollows in the covering slab, these rude stone monuments of Syria have, so far as is known, neither ornamentation nor rune nor other mark of the engraver's tool. In comparatively few instances they are made of hewn stone, very roughly cut, but generally they are of natural blocks and slabs entirely unformed. Thus, if there be any comparative scale of antiquity on which we can rely connected with the finish of the monument, the Syrian dolmens may claim to be considered among the oldest of their kind.