38 
on by professional men for purely commercial purposes, for we 
can hardly dignify the squires, farmers, and others who were glad 
to receive good brandy at a low price, and to remain in ignorance 
of its previous history, as amateurs. That title must remain for 
those who, like the former owner of this box, smuggled mainly 
from a love of adventure tinged more or less by desire to demon- 
strate the folly of an enactment which prevented the purchase of 
whiskey at a reasonable price at Carlisle or Wigton, and allowed 
it at Gretna or Annan. But as it is obvious that the genuine 
amateurs risked more in person, though not in purse, than the 
professional Trumbulls and Nanty Ewarts, it is evident that inven- 
tive ingenuity must have been active in their protection. Admirably 
designed as this box appears to be to accomplish the purpose for 
which it was made, the noble army of amateurs could never have 
trusted with safety to any single pattern. The same result must 
have been attained in so many different ways as to prevent the 
exciseman from regarding with special suspicion receptacles of any 
one particular make. I therefore hope that a result of the public- 
ation of these notes may be to induce some resident of this Border 
district to collect and lay before this Association the whole of the 
available evidence bearing upon Border smuggling, both as regards 
its extent and the various contrivances of those engaged in it either 
as professionals or amateurs. In a very few years all smugglers of 
both classes must have passed away. 
It may be suggested, perhaps, that the Cumberland Archzo- 
logical Society should be the recipient of communications of this 
kind rather than this Association. I do not know what the rule 
of the Archzological Society may be as regards the period dealt 
with in a paper, but the London Society of Antiquaries excludes 
all material less than a century old; a regulation which doubtless, 
on the whole, works well. I think besides, that in matters like 
Border smuggling, Gretna Green marriages, pack-horse traffic, etc., 
which have become extinct during the present century, the inquirer 
who will do the best work in collecting information from the oldest 
inhabitants will not do it as the result of his superior archzological 
knowledge, but rather as a consequence of his knowledge of men 
