NOTES ON A KITCHEN-MIDDEN ON INCHKEITH. 31 
identified as yet. Excluding these, the most numerous 
bones are those of young seals, some or all of which belong 
to the grey seal, Halicherus gryphus, a species which is not 
now found in the Firth of Forth. I have the bones belong- 
ing to at least seven or eight individual seals, of which one 
only seems to have been mature, as is evidenced by the 
epiphyses being firmly united to the vertebre. From this 
it seems probable that the natives of the country visited 
the island at the time when the seals were breeding, for 
the purpose of killing the young ones for food. My collec- 
tion of bones includes also a jaw and other bones, which, I 
am told, belonged to a young red deer, of larger size than 
the present race; also bones of a sheep and small ox, and 
a few that are doubtfully identified as belonging to a rabbit. 
The most interesting part of my find consists of some 
very rude but unmistakable bone implements. One of these 
has been worked to a sharp point and smoothed, probably 
for the purpose of being used as a pin to extract the 
periwinkle, or dapillus, from its shell. Other implements 
are of exactly the same kind as those which were found a 
year or two ago in the caves discovered then in Oban, and of 
which there is a large number in the Scottish National 
Museum of Antiquities. It has been suggested that these 
may possibly have been used to dislodge limpets from the 
rock to which they were adhering. I have many pointed 
fragments of marrow bones of mammals which cannot be 
identified. They have been split—perhaps simply for the 
purpose of extracting the marrow,—with the intention of 
being worked up into implements, in which case .the 
fragments may have been thrown aside as failures, I 
have one fragment of a particularly white and close-grained 
bone which must have belonged to a very large animal, 
which, however, none of the friends I have consulted has 
been able to identify. Many of the implements seem to 
be made of similar bones. It seems very improbable that 
these fragments of marrow bones belong to animals found 
and killed on the island, and I conjecture that some or all 
of them were carried about by the natives and brought with 
them to the island on their periodical visits to it, for the 
purpose of being worked into implements at their leisure. 
