Transactions. * 59 



succeeding Romans afterwards possessed tliemselves of in their 

 other attempts to subdue Scotland." 



Of the two entrenchments on Birrenswark, the southern is the 

 larger, measuring internally, according to the 25-inch Ordnance 

 map, 850 feet by 600 feet. The smaller or northern is 

 950 feet by 350 feet. Both of them are rougldy rectilinear, 

 and; in the words of Gordon, " surrounded by two ramparts and 

 a ditch in the middle." In the ramparts are several openings or 

 gates, defended by small quasi-circular mounds a short distance 

 in front of each. On the flat top of the hill there were in Roy's 

 time, some thirty years later, traces of several curvilinear works, 

 and, at its foot, remains of two small redoubts. Gordon represents 

 the two piincipal camps as joined by " a huge rampart of stone 

 and earth running round the east end of the hill." This connec- 

 tion led him to look upon them as forming one great camp. In 

 the same quarter Roy saw "imperfect vestiges of two lines, 

 including between them two weaker forts, whereof one is square 

 and the otlier circular." 



Two miles and a half south-east from Birrenswark is Birrens 

 — an earthwork of a diiferent type. The plan in the " Military 

 Antiquities " shows it to have had the form of a parallelogram. 

 Its sides, at least three of them, were once defended by from 

 four to seven ramparts of earth, with intervening ditches. 

 Those on the south, if they ever existed, had ere Roy's 

 day been swept away by the waters of the Mein ; and those 

 on the east and west have also all but disappeared. The 

 exterior dimensions were 1050 feet by 700 feet. Of the other 

 earthworks in North Britain it most nearly resembles Ardoch, 

 and Lyne, near Peebles. Roy figures two more that show 

 in his plates traces of having been surrounded in a similar way — 

 Castledykes near Carstairs, and Strageth in Perthshire. All 

 these he sets down as Roman Stations. 



In 1731 a notable discovery was made at Birrens. This was 

 the sculptured figure of the goddess Brigantia, an altar dedicated 

 to Mercury, and the inscribed pedestal of a statue of Mercuryj 

 all of which, after being for many years part of the collection of 

 antiquities in Pennicuik House, are now in the National Museum, 

 Edinburgh — the gift of the late Sir George Clerk, Bart. The 

 circumstances under which they were secured by "Baron" Clerk 

 had best be related in his own words. In a marginal note to 

 " Memoirs of My Life" he writes ; — "About this time (1731) the 



