32 Antiquities from the Stewartey. 



salmon feed in fresh water. Therefore, though they swallow 

 worms, minnows, and parr, and take march browns like any 

 trout, they do not feed. Therefore the plain meaning- of the 

 Eng-lish language is to be distorted to support a scientific theory. 

 But it is a scientific dictum, and of course we are bound to accept 

 it. 



2. Annotated List of Antiquities from the Stewartry of Kirkcud- 

 bright now preserved in the National Museum. By Mr F. R. 

 Coles, Assistant-Keeper, National Museum of Antiquities, 

 Edinburgh. 



In offering this contribution to the Society, I thought that 

 the preservation of such a list might be helpful to students of 

 Archaeology, and also useful for reference to visitors from the 

 country in need of a direct and ready method of finding the 

 objects in which they are likely to be most interested. Perhaps, 

 too, some useful inferences may be drawn from a survey of what 

 the Stewartry has yielded in comparison with what it has not. I 

 make the Catalogue of the National Museum the basis of arrange- 

 ment, than which it is impossible to find one that is more thorough, 

 complete, and. in all respects satisfactory. 



At the very outset one is struck with the fact of the entire 

 absence of even a small collection of Flint Implements — a fact all 

 the more strongly emphasised by the presence of only one insig- 

 nificant piece of Flint out of all the varied objects, numbering 

 nearly two hundred, unearthed during the famous Borness Cave 

 excavation. This is the more astonishing when we know, that 

 from Wigtownshire, the Glenluce Sands alone have yielded nearly 

 eight thousand Flint Implements of many various forms. 



The earliest Implements, then, as yet credited to the 

 Stewartry, are Stone Axes, of which there are six, ranged as 

 follows in the Museum : Section AF 27, Axe of Felstone, 6 in. 

 by i\ in., found in Twynholm and presented by Rev. J. Milligan 

 in 1868. Number 28, Axe of Greenstone, 8 in. by 3 in., from 

 Tongland ; 66, Axe of Syenite, 61 in. by %\ in. — both presented 

 by Rev. J. Milligan ; the next. Number 77, an Axe of Greenstone, 

 measures only 3 in. by 2 in., and is from Girthon, presented by 

 Rev. G. Murray in 1861. Number 86, portion of the pointed end 

 of a finely-polished Axe of Green Avanturine, presents several 



