We cannot say for certain that the dolmens, as the French call the monuments which we term cromlechs, were reproductions in stone of the closed beds of the men of the polished-stone age, but it is probable. The great family dolmens were cemeterial big Beds of Ware to accommodate a number, and the small kistvaens were single beds for old bachelors. Some of the largest dolmens contain as many as forty sleepers. Under Brown Willy, the highest point of the Cornish moors, is one long kistvaen, and beside it a tiny one for a baby--the mother’s bed and the cradle, side by side, for the long night of death. [Illustration: _Fig. 24._--DOLMEN, GABAUDET, NEAR GRAMAT. DEP. DE LOT.] It has been supposed that the cromlechs, or dolmens, and the kistvaens, represent the ancient dwellings of the neolithic men. I do not think so. The position of the bodies shows that they were intended, not as dwellings, but as beds. If they resembled anything used in life, it was the bed-compartments in the huts, not the huts themselves. These bed-compartments were backed, walled, and roofed with stone. I was once offered in Antwerp a very beautifully carved oak bed; it was but an oblong box, with an opening on one side only, which could be closed with a curtain, and very much like a berth in an old-fashioned steam-packet. The reader will remember the graphic description, in “Wuthering Heights,” of a very similar close-bed of boards as used in Yorkshire. That Yorkshire bed was a lineal descendant from the _lokhvila_ of the Scandinavian colonists of Northumbria. When danger of assassination in bed ceased, men began to sleep easier, breathe freer, and dispensed with the door and its bolts. They shut themselves in with curtains instead; and as there were practical inconveniences in making beds, where the bed maker could not go round to the wall side, cautiously and with hesitation suffered the bed to be pulled out, so that it might stand free on all sides save the head. Then head and top alone remained of board, two sides and foot were left open, or partially open; they could be closed with curtains, and the sleeper could and did convert his bed into a sort of box when he retired to rest.