Water

from these channels is given to sick children in Perth shire, if po ible in spoons made from the horn of a living cow, on special days such as the first Sunday in May, being equivalent to “ May dew,” or water from a holy well (Proc. Socy. of Antig. of Scotland, vol. xxiv, 1890). It is a popular error to suppose that all dolmens are sepulchral, though stone chambers so formed, and covered with mounds, were tombs—as is shown by the careful excavation of the Guernsey dolmens, Col. Conder, after exploring 700 dolmens in Moab, says that “the sepulchral idea is out of the question” (Quarterly Stat. Palestine Evpl. Fund, April 1886). The ancient Can a a nites, Pheenicians, and others, buried in caves or rock tombs; but in the rocky Moab region bodies laid in dolmens would have been on the surface; and neither mounds nor stone heaps covered these monuments, which are often too small for tombs, and have channels and cup hollows on the top stone. Herr Schumacher (Acro Jordan) says also that the “dolmens were not covered with mounds.” The Markulim (or Mercury) monument described in the Mishna was a kind of dolmen (see Col. Conder’s Heth and Moab). The Syrian explorers find no law of orientation in the dolmen fields. One fine example at El Mareighat, in Moab, gives a dolmen as the door of a sacred circle, with alignments of menhirs (as in Britt any) outside. Rustics in Europe still heal the sick by dragging them through dolmens, and holes in rocks. [Dolmens occur all over Europe, especially in Norway, Bretagne, and Ireland. They are found in numbers in Tripoli, but vot in other parts of Africa; also in Eastern Palestine, though very rare W. of Jordan. They are well known in India, and in all cases seem to be the work of primitive races—Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic, The term is loosely applied both to ancient altar stones, and also to tomb chambers, for the structure would serve either purpose.—Ep.] See Stones. Doman. Doms. A small, dark, ancient, non-Aryan race who preceded Dravidians in the upper part of Central India, once extending to the rivers of Oudh, in ancient Kosala and Gondia, but conquered by Gonds. They are still numerous in Oudh, leaving marks of building capacity at Domdha, Doman-garh, and other well known Dom strongholds, renamed by their succe ors. ’Ali- Baksh-Dom, of Ramlabad in Oudh, was a Moslem Dom governor in historic times. The land-owning Babhans of Bihar (some 200,000 in all), under the Maha-Rajes of Banaras are Doms, or Dom-Katars, They were great tree worshipers, like the “Tree Gonds,” or the Bars who held rites under the bar or banian tree, the bél, and mahwa trees —the latter prized for sweet flowers and spirit-yielding properties (Elliot's Ethnogr. 583