Address of the President. £3 



more difficult to understand the use or purpose of the small 

 crannogs we have been investigating this year. They must 

 have been constructed with very considerable labour, but 

 their small size would unfit them for any lengthened resi- 

 dence. Utensils have been found upon or near them, but I 

 am not aware of any clue being given to their real use unless 

 they were store places where larger habitations were near. 

 They are perhaps analogous to the Pachwerkhauten of the 

 Swiss lakes which wei'e formed of a solid mass of mud, stones, 

 &c., with layers of horizontal and perpendicular stakes. 



We have this year examined two of these small stinic- 

 tures as I have already described to you, and I visited a 

 third in the Castle Loch, Lochmaben. It was during the 

 fishing for vendace when I was making enquiry if anything 

 of the kind was known there that a man present said he 

 knew of one and could take me to it. He did so, and we 

 found what appeared to be a large heap of stones only a few 

 yards across, and then from 12 to 18 inches below the sur- 

 face. He said that he and his brother had some years since 

 taken from three to four cart loads of oak wood from it. I 

 think that round this loch there may have been at a former 

 period some larger stockaded habitations. 



The buildings raised upon platforms we can more easily 

 understand : in those of very early date the piles would be 

 cut, sharpened, driven, and the entire habitation erected 

 with the rude intruments then in possession. In the case of 

 Dowalton and those we have examined the marks of metal 

 tools are clearly evident, but these structures could scarcely 

 be made when the water of the lochs was at its present 

 height. The habitations in Dowalton stood upon a founda- 

 tion of stones, heather, fern, and brushwood ; the piles and 

 stockading was to strengthen them. They were inhabited, 

 and when so they were above watei*. The suggestion made 

 by Sir W. Maxwell of Monreith was an easy explanation :— 

 " The waters originally discharged themselves into the sea 

 from the western end of the valley, a portion of them only 

 now finding an exit that way in consequence of the forma- 



