golden armilla of later times. The Danish antiquaries are familiar with examples of unfinished stone implements; and also with a still more curious class, consisting of broken hammers and otherwise mutilated instruments, which have been perforated with another hole or ground to a new edge, affording striking evidence of their value to the primitive owners. One implement (Fig. 22), partaking of the characteristics both of the hammer and axe, was dug up on the farm of Dell, in the parish of Abernethy, and is engraved from a sketch by the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart. It measures eight inches in length, and was found at a depth of about five feet from the surface, in a soil consisting of two feet of mould lying above peat moss. The curious stone maul already referred to, the form of which is shown on Plate III. Fig. 20, was discovered lying, as it had been deposited, on a heap of burned bones, at the base of one of the monoliths of a stone circle at Crichie, Kintore, Aberdeenshire. Its length is about four inches; but it is of a rare, if not unique form, and is suggestive rather of a symbolical implement or badge of office, than an instrument designed for practical use, unless it may be regarded as a working tool of the primitive goldsmith.

Unperforated spherical stones, generally about the size of an orange, have been referred to along with other contents of Scottish tumuli. It is not always possible to distinguish such objects, when free from ornamentation, from the stone cannon-balls which continued in use even in the reign of James VI. The circumstances under which they occur, however, leave no room to doubt that they rank among the articles wrought long prior to so modern an era; and were held in esteem by the primitive races of Britain, ages before the chemical properties of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal had been employed to supersede older projectile forces. The dis

tinction is further confirmed by their being frequently decorated with incised circles and other ornaments, as in the example shown here, found near the line of the old Roman way which runs through Dumfriesshire on its northern course from Carlisle. Another of highly polished flint has already been described among the disclosures of a large cairn on the Moor of Glenquicken, Kirkcudbrightshire; and two were shown me in 1850 as a part of the contents of a cist recently opened in the course of farming operations on the estate of Cochno, Dumbartonshire, one of which was made of highlypolished red granite, a species of rock unknown in that district. Several decorated examples, dredged up in

the Tay, are preserved in the Perth Museum; but by far the most remarkable one, now in the Scottish Museum of Antiquities (Plate III. Fig. 24), was dug up on the Glasshill, in the parish of Towie, Aberdeenshire, in the vicinity of several large tumuli. Four rounded projections are attached to the central ball, three of which are ornamented with elaborate incised patterns, as shown in the engraving, while the fourth is plain. The whole measures 2 inches in diameter. Balls similar to those previously described, occur among the relics found in the barrows at Denmark, but this example appears to be unique. Others pertain to a class of primitive objects described by the Northern Antiquaries

under the name of Corn Crushers. A rude block of stone is frequently found, flattened on the upper side, with a circular cavity in the centre, into which a smooth ball of stone has been made to fit, thereby supplying by a less efficient means the same purpose aimed at in the querne, discovered so frequently under a variety of shapes among the relics of various early Scottish periods. The shallow circular stone troughs or mortars so often found in Scottish burghs and weems belong to the same class. A still ruder device consists of a pair of stones which have evidently been employed in rubbing against each other, it may be presumed with the same object, of bruising the grain for domestic use. They have been occasionally noticed among the chance disclosures of the spade or plough in Scotland, and are of common occurrence in the Irish bogs. The author of the Account of Halkirk Parish, Caithness, thus describes the mortars above referred to, and the pestles or crushers, which are found together in the burghs "I have seen in them numbers of small round hard stones, in the form of a very flat or oblate sphere, of 2 inches thick in the centre, and about four inches in diameter; also other round stones, perfectly circular, very plain and level on one side, with a small rise at the circumference, and about a foot in diameter. The intention of both these kinds of stones manifestly was to break and grind their grain." But such implements of homely industry and toil more frequently occur in the weems or burghs, or among chance discoveries in the soil, than in the cairn or cist. It may reasonably be assumed that neither the old British, nor the more modern Scandinavian warrior, deposited under the barrow of his chief, and alongside of his well-proved celt and spear, the corn-crusher with which his wives or his slaves were wont to prepare the 1 Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xix. p. 59.