It is hardly necessary, I suppose, to give formal proof of the familiar fact that an upright slab is one of the commonest modes of marking the place where a person is buried. From the ancient pillar that prehistoric savages set up over the tumulus of their dead chief, to the headstone that marks the dwarfed and stunted barrow in our own English cemeteries, the practice of mankind has been one and continuous. Sometimes the stone is a rough boulder from the fields; a representative of the big block which savages place on the grave to keep the corpse from rising: sometimes it is an oblong slab of slate or marble; sometimes, and especially among the more advanced races, it is {095}a shapely cross or sculptured monument. But whenever on earth interment is practised, there stones of some sort, solitary or in heaps, almost invariably mark the place of burial. Again, as presents and sacrifices are offered at graves to the spirits of the dead, it is at the stone which records the last resting-place of the deceased that they will oftenest be presented. As a matter of fact we know that, all the world over, offerings of wine, oil, rice, ghee, corn, and meat are continually made at the graves of chiefs or relations. Victims, both human and otherwise, are sacrificed at the tomb, and their blood is constantly smeared on the headstone or boulder that marks the spot. Indeed, after a time, the grave and the stone get to be confounded together, and the place itself comes to have a certain sacredness, derived from the ghost which haunts and inhabits it. Four well-marked varieties of early tombstone are recognised in the eastern continent at least, and their distribution and nature is thus described by Major Conder: “Rude stone monuments, bearing a strong family resemblance in their mode of construction and dimensions, have been found distributed over all parts of Europe and Western Asia, and occur also in India. In some cases they are attributable to early Aryan tribes; in others they seem to be of Semitic origin. They include _menhirs_, or standing stones, which were erected as memorials, and worshipped as deities, with libations of blood, milk, honey, or water poured upon the stones: _dolmens_, or stone tables, free standing--that is, not covered by any mound or superstructure, which may be considered without doubt to have been used as altars on which victims (often human) were immolated: _cairns_, also memorial, and sometimes surrounding menhirs; these were made by the contributions of numerous visitors or pilgrims, each adding a stone as witness of his presence: finally _cromlechs_, or stone circles, used as sacred enclosures or early hypæthral temples, often {096}with a central menhir or dolmen as statue or altar.”