140 account of antiquities hi Scotland. fan. i^. 

 this stage the priest officiated at the religious cere- 

 monies, the large stone supplying the place of an 

 altar, or a rostrum. •• 



There is not the smallest mark of a tool on any of 

 these stones ; but they are sometimes found of sur- 

 prisingly large dimensions, the horizontal one on the 

 south side especially, which seems ta have been al- 

 ways chosen of the largest size that could be found.^ 

 They are seldom lefs than six or eight feet in length, 

 visually between ten and t*vfelve ; and I met with one 

 that was near sixteen feet in length, and not lefs thaa. 

 eight feet in diameter in any of its dimensions. It 

 appears to us amazing how, in these rude times^ 

 stones of such a size could have been moved at all ; 

 and yet they are so regularly placed, in the proper 

 part of the circle, and so much detached from other 

 stones as leaves not a pofsibility of doubting that they 

 have been placed there by design. 



It does not seem, however, that they have been 

 confined to any particular size or fhape of any of the 

 stones in these structures, for they are quite irregu- 

 lar in these respects j only they seem always to have 

 preferred the largest stones they could find, to such 

 as were smaller. Neither does there seem to have 

 been any particular number of stones preferred to- 

 any other ; it seems to have been enough that the 

 circle fliould be distinctly marked out. In the 

 ihirt of Nairn, where fiat thin stones much a- 

 bound, I saw some structures of this kind where, the 

 stones almost touched one another all round. It ap- 

 pears also by the plan annexed, that exact regnia- 



