When two or more basins occur on the same block they are indicated by brackets. No. 11 is a double basin, the two being connected by a groove 3 inches in depth. A similar remark applies to Nos. 22 and 23. The stone on which No. 39 is found contains several cavities which have been partially obliterated by the disintegration of the particles of the stone; or it may be by the hammers of the workmen who formerly made millstones out of some of the smaller boulders. Dr. Borlase, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, confidently asserts that the ancient Druids made use of rock basins for baptismal and sacrificial purposes. The probability of this conjecture is admitted by the authors of the Beauties of Derbyshire; and again by Higgins, in his elaborate work on the Celtic Druids. This supposition also receives support from the fact of their occurring in such numbers, mostly on the tops of the hills, in so many counties, and in such different materials as the granite and the millstone grit formations. Whether they have been formed by natural or artificial means is still a matter of dispute. Several are instanced as existing on Durwood Tor, which are from two to * Dr. Borlase's argument is of a cumulative character. He observes that rock basins are always on the top but never on the sides of the stones; that the ancients sacrificed on rocks; that water was used by them for lustration and purification; that it was even consecrated and worshipped as a Deity; that it was not permitted to touch the earth; that snow, rain or dew was preferred by them to running water; that Euripides notices the practice of worshippers being "dew"besprinkled " before going to the temples; that Pliny observes that the Greeks had "sacred rain," and preserved rain-water in cisterns to offer to their gods; that Petronius asserts that the Egyptians purified themselves with water before voting; that Job alludes to the same custom; that the Druids practised similar rites, and held rain or snow-water to be holy; that Pliny says their priests washed their feet in holy water, used lustrations, and practised baptismal rites; that the Druids attributed a healing virtue to the gods which inhabited the rocks; that they used to sleep upon rocks for the cure of lameness; that their priests stood upon rocks to wash, sprinkle and drink; that Pliny again says that the Samolus plant, or hedge hyssop, was bruised in small cisterns, and that small basins were used for offerings, so that by evaporation they could go to God. All these considerations, he conceives, favour his opinion that rock basins were used, if not formed, by the ancient Druids. It is beside the question to urge the improbability of all this on the ground that Cæsar and Tacitus do not expressly mention rock basins. A chapter on the rock worship of the Druids might be expected in a treatise on the Druidical rites of Britain, but not in such general descriptions as those contained in the works of Tacitus and Cæsar. 66 three feet in diameter; and Mr. Rooke, in the Archæologia, vol. xii, p. 47, states that one of these is of an oval form, and evidently appears to have been cut with a tool." Three others are to be seen on the same Tor, which he thinks have also been formed artificially. In the neighbourhood of Liskeard there are other basins "mostly regular and uniform, "and generally two together, with a spout or channel between "them." In the Scilly Isles these rock basins are not uncommon. One stone on Salakee Downs has no fewer than thirteen scooped out upon it; and Dr. Borlase has no doubt of their artificial formation. On the other hand, Messrs. Britton and Brayley are of opinion that most of those in Cornwall are" certainly natural." They would be prepared to accept Dr. Borlase's theory of their artificial formation, provided the figures in his work" were to be considered apart "from any others; but unfortunately, as they conceive, "the gradation of the excavations is quite regular, from the "largest rock basins, five or six feet in diameter, to the most minute indentations. They also exist in such numbers, and "in all situations, as utterly to exclude the hand of man from "the great mass; and therefore to make some natural and "unknown process most probable in all." (Beauties of Cornwall, p. 509.) In this opinion they are supported by Dr. Maton, on the ground that the rocks on which the basins occur, "exhibit awful vestiges of convulsion." Whether this be a sufficient reason for their formation by natural means may be left to the reader. It must have been a somewhat orderly convulsion which scooped out so many regularly formed cavities in such hard material as the Cornish granite. I do not propose to enter at any great length into the controversy on these points; my object being more particularly to place on record the fact of the existence of rock basins in these localities. Mr. Joseph Whitaker, a very competent geologist, who accompanied me over a portion of the district, after carefully examining many of them, was not then prepared to pronounce a definite opinion on their origin. He thought much might be said in favour of natural causes; but, at the same time, allowed that the advocates of the opposite view have several good grounds for assuming that "the hand of "man" had something to do with their construction. My own opinion is, that the rock basins of Scilly, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Yorkshire and East Lancashire are partly natural and partly artificial;- the former being comparatively few and easily distinguished by their varying depths and forms. Their numbers, their general characteristics, their situations and their occurrence in such totally different geological formations, and in so many counties, appear to me to leave scarcely any other alternative. Higgins, in his Celtic Druids, p. 61, expresses a similar opinion. The accidental loosening of a quartz pebble, and the consequent disintegration of the stone by the water which lodges in the cavity, may account for some of the smaller and most irregular indentations; but it is difficult to conceive how these means can produce such marked regularity of form as everywhere prevails. Natural decay, acting from special centres, cannot have produced these basins; since they mostly occur on the hardest and soundest blocks. Again the round, or rather spheroidal masses or nodules, so frequently met with in some of the coal strata, do not occur, so far as I am aware, in either the granite or the millstone grit. The cavities, therefore, cannot have been formed by the removal of these; nor, again, does the action of running water upon small hard pebbles, revolving at first in slight natural indentations, seem sufficient to explain all their remarkable characteristics.* It cannot, for instance, easily That rock basins can be formed by the action of small pebbles is well shewn at the Strid, on the banks of the Wharfe, near Bolton Abbey. Dr. Whitaker thus alludes to some which have been thus formed near to Holme, his family residence. "The original fractures [of the Cliviger Gorge] have not, and could "not have been occasioned by water: but what that powerful agent has been "able to effect, under circumstances most favourable to its operation, in narrow clefts and deep waterfalls, is this :-it has worn away the first asperities, it has 66 |