140 i THE Lost STONE OF KIRKMADRINE. 
ments Bill, and in 1889 they were Staced in a recess, and 
taken charge of by H.M. Board of Works. 
The missing stone was found by accident in October of 
last year. Visitors to the district have remarked on the 
strange pillars for posts to gates seen here and there in the 
Rhinns. They are like miniature corn stacks, some six feet 
high and eleven feet in circumference. The gate ma on 
a batt fastened into a stone in the pillar. 
On such a batt the gate of my manse swings. The iron 
having broken, it was found necessary to take out the former 
stone, and put in another with a new iron batt. It was found 
that the stone ran all the diameter of the pillar, and when 
' it was got out and the new put in, there was a huge gap to fill 
up. The mason naturally thought the best way was to use the 
former stone for that purpose. It seemed an ordinary stone, 
so he commenced to break it. Fortunately it was not lying 
_to his mind, and he turned it over. Then, being an intelli- 
gent man, he saw to his dismay what he was trying to break. 
He was greatly relieved when we found it was the blank end 
that was broken, that the upper inscribed part was only cleft 
in two, and that the two parts fitted in perfectly, scarcely a 
particle being awanting. 
The stone has been cemented, under the care of the 
architect of H.M. Board of Works, and will soon be placed 
alongside the other two larger stones, hardly a whit worse. 
This stone is about three feet long, nine inches broad, 
and nine inches thick. The monogram is the same as on the 
other two. It is three inches from the top, and eight inches 
in diameter. One inch lower is the inscription, Initium et 
Finis, in two lines of letters, 14 to 14 inch in size. The 
M of initium is either frayed, or, more likely, as in some other 
cases, intentionally made like an R. The circle and inscrip- 
tion take up about thirteen inches, leaving three inches blank 
at the top and twenty inches below. The Chi-Rho monogram 
of which there are four specimens at Kirkmadrine, is found 
on a boundary (?) stone at Whithorn, and nowhere else in 
Scotland. Is that owing to the masons brought from France 
by Ninian to build Whithorn? But that question may, never 
be answered, any more than why the inscription was made 
