122; White Quartz Pebbles. 



the smaller white stones serve the purpose of indicating the 

 spot where the remains of their dead were laid, and it seems 

 almost certain that they -chose these particular white quartz 

 pebbles for some symbolic reason upon which I am anxious 

 to throw some light. 



While staying last September at Glenluce, I found in the 

 library there, the Arckccological and Historical Collections^ 

 Relating to Ayrshire and Galloway, which contain most inter- 

 esting papers by the late Rev. George Wilson, minister of the 

 Free Church at Glenluce, an ardent antiquary and one greatly 

 beloved and respected in the district. They relate to his 

 finds at Mid Torrs, and to those who have not already come 

 across the papers, it may be interesting to hear what he says. 

 But first I should like to say that in addition to the white 

 quartz pebbles being found outside, and round the burial 

 places already alluded to, they have actually been found 

 inside the urns there. They have been similarly found in 

 other places, in Scotland, England, Ireland, the Isle of Man, 

 and in foreign countries, both in urns of the Bronze Age, 

 and in cists of the Stone Age with skeletons in a contracted 

 position. 



Mr Wilson says that " On a sandy knoll, three or four 

 feet above the level of a flat marshy moor, two hundred 

 yards east of Knockencrunge (a large sand-hill at Mid Torrs), 

 urns have been found. Heather and herbage have been 



gradually killed by the drifting sand which has been moving 

 much more since the great storms of wind in 1883, and the 

 moory soil has been blown away till the upper parts of these 

 urns have been exposed to the weather — in such a situation,, 

 the frost is very destructive to urns, so that the exposed parts 

 have quite disappeared. The urns were interred in a circular 

 space enclosed by a ring or belt of gravel about three feet 

 broad and twenty-seven feet in diameter, which might have 

 been originally narrower before the sand began to blow. The 

 gravel consists chiefly of water-worn pebbles of grey Silurian 

 sandstone, such as one finds covering the raised sea-beaches 

 among the sand-hills. But mixed with them there are many 

 white quartz pebbles, and some reddish ones. The white ones 

 must have been collected intentionally to form a kind of orna- 

 ment to this burying-ground, for they catch the eye at once^ 



