MR. LUKIS, in a paper recently read before the Society of Antiquaries, nominally “On certain Erroneous Views respecting the Construction of French Chambered Barrows,” but really a method of criticising severely Mr. Fergusson's work on the “Rude Stone Monuments,” states that it is an “error” to suppose that the Dolmens of that country were ever free-standing; in other word, he lays down the “rule,” “there were no free-standing dolmens in France.” The announcement that, with regard to monuments of whose fashioners we know absolutely nothing, a universal negative of this kind can be safely laid down as a law, would be startling, did it not come from one who is backed by such extensive inductive evidence as is Mr. Lukis. His “rule” was “established by the extreme rarity of the instances.” This being the case, he calls those “in error” who would, from these instances, form a small class, or species of dolmen. As, in an essay on the Cornish sepulchral monuments, which you recently most kindly reviewed at length, I am committed to this latter view—one, by the way, which I had struck out for myself before the appearance of the “Rude Stone Monuments,”—will you kindly permit me to call your attention to one structure which I have ventured to place, and shall still venture to place, in the discarded class? I do so as a protest against the dictum of Mr. Lukis being extended to our British examples, before a careful scrutiny has been made of every monument of the kind from one corner of our islands to the other. On this single instance, such as it is, it must be clearly understood that I build no theory; it will be for others to judge whether it does not afford some evidence of the difference in construction and use of the dolmen or table-stone proper, and the kist-vaen cromlech; one thing only I will add, that, limited as my experience is to the monuments of Britain, I shall not be exposed to the temptation of explaining away any observed fact in order to reconcile a doubtful comparison. Without feeling that I am guilty of “dabbling in archteology,” or of setting forth “any dogmatic expositions of hypotheses” (!!), or of “establishing my proposition from second-hand information,” or in short of being the victim of any very “erroneous view” (all which faults Mr. Lukis finds in those who differ from him), I consider that the following facts justify my statement that the monument I am about to describe always was, as it is now, a free-standing dolmen.