The word “dolmen,” usually rendered table-stone, should, according to Max Müller, be more properly translated “holed” stone, implying either a gateway, such as is formed by the trilithon, or else applying to menhirs and dolmens pierced with a hole, as in the case of the Ring stone, the Odin stone, and a peculiar class of holed dolmens. The one I saw in Circassia was of this latter category. Instead of three stones supporting the covering slab, as is almost invariably the case in Syria, there were four, and in the centre of the fourth was a circular hole, about eighteen inches in diameter, or just large enough to allow a thin man to squeeze through. Some have supposed these holes to be connected with some sacrificial rite, others to be due to the superstition that the dead could not rest in peace in tombs without an inlet for air. But the whole subject is encompassed with mystery, and affords material for endless conjecture. So also do the sacred stone circles, of which I have seen several to the east of the Jordan. They are held in the greatest veneration by the Arabs, who can give no rational explanation of the sacred character they possess, except that they have been sacred from immemorial time. Here, again, these may either have originally had a sepulchral character, or they may have had reference to that peculiar and most ancient worship of which the menhir or monolith was the emblem, for in some instances menhirs are placed in certain fixed positions in regard to the circles, or they may have had an astronomical significance. It is singular that to this day the reverential attitude of the Arab is outside of the circle with his face to the rising sun, while in India the same circles are to be found among the Khonds in connection with the worship of the rising sun, the tallest member of the circle being towards the east. The conclusions at which we may proximately arrive with reference to these interesting monuments are—according to Captain Conder, to whose researches I am indebted for many of the foregoing remarks—that the menhir is the emblem of the earliest religious idea suggested by the creative potency; that the circle may either have a sacred significance connected therewith, or be a sepulchral enclosure; that the dolmen, when free standing, is more likely to have been an altar than a tomb, but when buried beneath a cairn it may have been sepulchral; that the cairn is not always sepulchral, being sometimes a memorial heap; and that all are relics of a long-buried past. THE DISCOVERY OF UMM EL-KANATAR.