the head broken away, but the perforation has not been in the centre. It measures 3 inches in length. Others of the tools are still more simple: mere flat pieces of bone, roughly rubbed to an edge, and indicating the merest rudiments of art and contrivance. Two other examples from the same hoard are represented here. The smaller one is formed from the lower end of the metatarsal bone of a sheep, and the larger-perhaps intended as the handle of some implement of delicate structure, appears to be fashioned from the metatarsal or metacarpal bone of a lamb.' It is notched

with a rude attempt at ornament, which, as in the oxbone dagger, must have greatly impaired its strength. Along with those were also found a number of circular discs of slate, about half an inch thick, roughly chipped into shape, and about the size of a common dessert plate. The most ready idea that can be formed

1 The inferior articular surface of the bone has separated, which supplies evidence of its having been a lamb, union not having taken place owing to the youth of the animal.

of them is, that they were actually designed for a similar purpose.

Such simple relics of the primitive period may not inaptly recall to us the evidences of another class of occupants of the old Caledonian forests. At the very era when the Briton had to arm himself with such imperfect weapons, the wolf was one of his most common foes. The wild boar continued to be a favourite object of the chase long after the era of the Roman invasion; though the huge Bos primigenius, whose fossil remains are so frequently found in our mosses and marl-pits, had then made way for the Bos longifrons and the Urus Scoticus, or Caledonian bull, which still forms so singularly interesting an occupant of the ancient forest of Cadzow, Lanarkshire. The large tusks frequently found among later alluvial deposits attest the enormous size attained by the Caledonian boar; and its repeated occurrence on sculptured legionary tablets of Antoninus' wall may be due in part to its pre-eminence among the wild occupants of the forests which skirted the Roman vallum in the carse of Falkirk, and along the slopes of the Campsie Hills. On constructing a new road a few years since, along the southern side of the rock on which Edinburgh Castle stands, deers' horns and boars' tusks of the largest dimensions were found; and in an ancient service-book of the monastery of Holyrood, the ground which some of the oldest buildings of the Scottish capital have occupied for many centuries, is described as "ane gret forest, full of hartis, hyndis, toddis, and sic like manner of beistis." Thus is it with all that is venerable: an older still precedes it; and the docile student, after toiling vainly in pursuit of all attainable knowledge, still seems to see behind, as before him, an unknown undiminished by all he has recovered. Meanwhile, it becomes manifest, that the more minutely we investigate

the primitive Scottish era, the further it recedes into the past leading our thoughts, as Sir Thomas Browne quaintly, but devoutly expresses it, "unto old things and considerations of times before us, when even living men were antiquities, when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world could not be properly said, abiit ad plures, to go unto the greater number; and to run up our thoughts upon the Ancient of days, the antiquary's truest object, unto whom the eldest parcels are young, and earth itself an infant."

CHAPTER VII.

STONE VESSELS.

A GREAT variety of stone vessels, of different forms and sizes, have been found in Scotland under different circumstances, but in most of them the imperfect attempts at ornament, and the whole form and character, correspond to the rudest arts of the Scottish aborigines. Even sepulchral urns of this durable material are not uncommon, especially in the northern and western isles. Wallace thus describes one found in the island of Stronsa:" It was a whole round stone like a barrel, hollow within, sharp edged at the top, having the bottom joined like the bottom of a barrel. On the mouth was a round stone." From the engraving which ac companies this description, it may be more correctly compared in form to a common flower pot, decorated with a series of parallel lines running round it. In the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of London there are two rude stone urns, believed to be the same exhibited to the Society by Captain James Veitch in 1822, which were discovered on the demolition of a cairn in the island of Uyea, Shetland, along with many similar urns, mostly broken, and all containing bones and ashes. They are formed of Lapis ollaris, and are described in Mr. Albert Way's Catalogue of the Society's Collection, as two rudely-fashioned vessels of stone, or small cists,

1 Wallace's Orkney, p. 56.

of irregular quadrangular form, one of them having large aperture at the bottom, closed by a piece of stone, fitted in with a groove, but easily displaced. The other has a triangular aperture on one side, and is perforated with several smaller holes regularly arranged. The dimensions of the larger are about 9 inches by 4, and the other 7 inches by 3. Dr. Hibbert refers to another of the same class, but probably of superior workmanship, which he saw on his visit to the island of Uyea. It was found along with other urns, and is noted as "a wellshaped vessel, that had been apparently constructed of a soft magnesian stone of the nature of the Lapis ollaris.

The bottom of the urn had been wrought in a separate piece, and was fitted to it by means of a circular groove. When found, it was filled with bones partly consumed by fire." A fragment of another such urn in the Scottish Museum is designated by the donor part of a vase of a steatitic kind of rock, found in 1829 within a kistvaen on the island of Uyea, one of the most northern of the Shetland group. A large sepulchral urn, dug up at an earlier period on the island of Eigg, is described as consisting of a round stone, which had been hollowed, with the top covered with a thin flag. It contained human bones, and was found in a tumulus which tradi

1 Hibbert's Shetland, p. 412.