SUNDRY ANTIQUITIES. 173 



fired ; but the animal, though much disabled, still 

 struggled on, and, to put an end to its sufferings, we 

 scrambled up the rocks in pursuit. On reaching a 

 birchen copse above the cliff, a long shot secured my 

 hare ; aud pausing by the ruins of a deserted cottage, 

 I began to ponder upon the policy which had bartered 

 the lives of human beings for those of " the beasts that 

 perish," and desolated so many of what were once 

 happy hearths, merely to provide a greater range and 

 fuller security for the grouse, the moorfowl, the deer, 

 or the sheep. While occupied with these thoughts, I 

 remarked that the cottage had been built within what, 

 at first sight, I imagined to be one of the sacred circles 

 of the Druids ; but Johnny informed me that it was 

 one of those objects, so full of interest to the archaeo- 

 logist, as a vestige of an age and generation long since 

 passed away, the original use of which it is difficult to 

 decide, a Pictish tower. 



Forming a circle, about thirty yards in diameter, its 

 wall was nearly two yards in thickness, and though 

 crumbled away all round to the same horizontal level, 

 yet, from the great unevenness of the ground, it was 

 much higher in some parts than in others. Com- 

 posed entirely of blocks of stone, roughly hewn and 

 uncemented by any mortar, on one side, where the 

 ground sloped rapidly away, it still rose to the height 

 of about twenty feet ; and here I could distinguish 

 the traces of an old doorway, a specimen of very simple 

 and unpretending masonry, being a square hole about 

 four feet high, surmounted by a huge triangular block 

 of stone, resting on side-posts roughly cut from the 

 rock. 



Though the first of the kind I had myself seen, 

 Johnny informed me that there were not less than a 

 score more, in better or worse preservation, within the 



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