64 True Principles of Arch.^i:ology. 



its way Into some country house, they are regarded with 

 curiosity for a while, carefully preserved perhaps for a g-enera- 

 tion or so, but without any written record being- kept of the 

 place or circumstances in which they were found ; so that 

 when that generation passes away, these relics, if they are not 

 wholly lost, remain worthless as witnesses to history. The 

 handiwork of primitive races is strangely similar in all parts of 

 the world. Of what use is it, then, to store up a stone axe or 

 a flint arrow head without any record to show in what country, 

 nay, in what hemisphere it was found? Such objects are 

 literally worthless unless accompanied by a statement of the 

 exact locality and conditions and their relation to other objects. 

 Many years ago the late Mr Cochran Patrick and I spent 

 some long- summer days excavating a crannog or lake- 

 dwelling. We found very few manufactured articles ; so few, 

 indeed, that a neighbouring cottager's wife, who came to 

 watch our operations in the third day, after standing some 

 time expecting something to turn up, and expecting in vain, 

 exclaimed, " I think they maun hae been a puir folk an' a 

 carefu' that leeved here. They hadna muckle gear, and what 

 they had they took awa' wi' them." Unconsciously, the 

 good lady in these simple words anticipated the conclusion to 

 which we had to come at the end of our labours, and the his- 

 tory of the past was enriched by the knowledge that the 

 people who constructed and lived on this island were far from 

 affluent, living chiefly by the chase, just as the historian 

 Tacitus tells us was the mode of life followed by the Cale- 

 donian tribes which repelled Agricola's invasion of the High- 

 lands in the year of our Lord 86. 



Something, however, we did find, and this is the point 

 of my story. Scattered through a mass of decayed fern, we 

 recovered nineteen little scarlet beads, no doubt the necklace 

 of some Celtic matron or maid, who deplored their loss as 

 bitterly as a modern fine lady might weep for the loss of a 

 diamond tiara. Phoenician and Roman traders found beads 

 quite as acceptable articles of barter among the barbarous 

 natives of this country as they are at this day among the 

 primitive inhabitants of Central Africa. Well, we were 

 greatly pleased with the discovery, but you will only find 

 seventeen of those beads in the museum of Scottish Anti- 



