powers. It is worthy of note, indeed, that the word Druidheachd is no longer associated with the priesthood of the British groves, but is now only used by the Scottish Highlanders as applicable to sorcery or magic. Another, but much less perfect ornament of perforated reddish stone, in the same collection with the above, was found, along with several flint arrow-heads, in the island of Harris; and a third, still ruder, was discovered, with a similar arrow-head, on the Lomond Hills of Fifeshire. But perhaps the most singular relics of this class discovered in Scotland are two stone collars, found near the celebrated Parallel Roads of Glenroy, and now pre

FIG. 33.-Stone Collars.

served at the mansion of Tonley, Aberdeenshire. They are each of the full size of a collar adapted to a small Highland horse; the one formed of trap or whinstone, and the other of a fine-grained red granite. They are not, however, to be regarded as the primitive substitutes for the more convenient materials of later introduction. On the contrary, what has been supposed to be the imitation of the details of a horse-collar of common materials is attempted, including the folds of the leather, nails, buckles, and holes for tying particular parts together. They are finished with much care and a high degree of polish, and are described as obviously the

workmanship of a skilful artist. Mr. Skene, who first drew attention to these remarkable relics, suggests the probability of the peculiar natural features of Glenroy having led to the selection of this amphitheatre for the scene of ancient public games; and that these stone collars might commemorate the victor in the chariot race, as the tripods still existing record the victor in the Choragic games of Athens. But no circumstances attending their discovery are known which could aid conjecture either as to the period or purpose of their construction.1

In the year 1832, a large tumulus, on the shore of Broadford Bay, Isle of Skye, was levelled in the progress

of some improvements on the estate of Corry, and was found to cover a rudely vaulted chamber, within which lay a cist enclosing a human skeleton, along with various bones of animals, the species of which were not ascertained. Alongside of the skeleton an ornament of polished pale green-stone was discovered, measuring about 2 inches in length, by 2 inches in breadth. Its form will be best understood by the annexed woodcut (Fig. 34). It is convex on the upper side, and concave on the under side, with a small hole drilled at each of the four corners, and an ornamental border of slightly indented ovals

1 Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 299.

along one end. It differs only in dimensions from one previously referred to, in the Arbuthnot collection, obtained from a tumulus at Cruden, Aberdeenshire, but measuring 44 inches in length. Another ornament (Fig. 35) of polished green-stone was afterwards discovered in the neighbourhood of the tumulus at Broadford Bay, measuring about 3 inches in length, and nearly an inch in breadth at the centre, but tapering to about half an inch in breadth at each end, where a small hole is drilled through. It is only a fifth of an inch in thickness. Simple as are the forms of both relics, they represent a class which appears to have been common among the personal decorations of the Stone Period, whether regarded merely as ornaments, or valued for some hidden virtue which may have been supposed to pertain to them. In a sepulchral deposit, discovered by some labourers employed in sinking a ditch at Tring, in Hertfordshire, about the year 1763, the relics were entirely of the same primitive class; and the interment furnished an example in confirmation of previous remarks regarding early sepulchral rites, as the skeleton was found laid at full length, with legs and arms extended. Between the legs lay some, flint arrow-heads, and at the feet ornaments closely resembling, both in form and material, those found in the tumulus at Broadford Bay.1 Sir R. C. Hoare describes objects of similar character, found in the barrows of Wiltshire, some of which were made of blue slate; and small perforated plates of stone or flint, of slightly varying forms, are not uncommon among the contents of the earlier British tumuli. They are not, however, confined to Britain. Simple as are the forms of the two relics figured above, there is a sufficiently marked character about them to excite our surprise when

1 Archæology, vol. viii. p. 429. Plate xxx. Fig. 6.

2 Ancient Wiltshire, Plates II. and XII.

we meet with them in the grave of the ancient native of Skye, and in the cists of Herts or Wiltshire; but ornaments of almost exactly the same forms have been discovered in the mounds of the great valley of the Mississippi,' accompanied with celts, stone hatchets, and other primitive implements closely resembling those of the British Stone Period; though also with many more so essentially differing, as to forbid the deduction from such chance coincidences of any fanciful community of origin between the Allophylian colonists of Europe and the American Mound Builders.

Still ruder are the primitive necklaces, formed of the common small shells of our coasts, such as the Nerita litoralis, and even the Patella vulgata, or common limpet, perforated, apparently, by the simple process of rubbing the point on a stone, and then strung together with a fibre or sinew. Sufficient space, it may perhaps be thought, has already been devoted to this infantile period of art; yet childish as such decorations seem, they are found among the relics of men whose giant monuments have outlived many massive structures destined by later ages to perpetuate the memory of historic deeds, or consecrated to the services of the all-powerful Church of medieval Christendom. Underneath the cromlech or megalithic cist discovered on levelling a tumulus in the Phoenix Park at Dublin, in 1838, two male skeletons. were disclosed, and beside the skull of each lay the perforated shells (Nerita litoralis) of a necklace, which had doubtless been placed around their necks when they were deposited in the simple but grand mausoleum that still attests the veneration of the ancient natives for their chiefs. A portion of the vegetable fibre with which the shell-beads had been strung together remained through some of them; and the only other relics found in the 1 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, p. 237.

VOL. I.

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grave were a small fibula of bone, and a knife or lancehead of flint. The common British bivalves are also found used for similar decorations. In a cist discovered on the coast of the Firth of Forth, during the construction of the Edinburgh and Granton Railway, the only relics deposited beside the skeleton which it enclosed were a quantity of the Cardium commune, or cockle, of different sizes, rubbed down until they were reduced nearly to rings; while in another cist, opened at Orkney, about two dozen oyster-shells lay heaped together, each perforated with a hole nearly an inch in diameter.