COMPARATIVE ARCHAZOLOGY. 173 
Picts’ Knives.—In 1905 I presented to the National 
Museum on behalf of their owner, R. C. Haldane, Esq. of 
Lochend, seven specimens of the so-called ‘‘ Picts’ Knives,”’ 
or scrapers, peculiar to Shetland; and later on I wrote a 
monograph on the Shetland knives from the standpoint of 
comparative archeology, of which the present notice is a brief 
abstract (Proceed. S.A. Scot., vol. xl., p. 151). 
These seven knives were found at Esheness, Northmavine, 
while making a road in the year 1g00, at a depth of nine inches 
in gravelly soil, from which a superincumbent growth of peat 
to a depth of about four feet had been previously removed. 
The hoard contained 11 knives, but some were broken, and 
they were packed closely together with the edges uppermost. 
Mr Haldane secured seven, and the remaining four fell into 
the hands of Mr J. M. Goudie, Lerwick, who, a few years 
later, also presented them to the National Museum. 
A mere glance at these relics shows that they possess 
certain qualities which place them in a special category among 
ancient stone implements. They are large thin blades made 
of voleanic rock, known as rock-porphyry, irregularly oval or 
subquadrangular in form, and highly polished on both sur- 
faces, with the margin of each ground to what may be called 
a cutting edge. Porphyritic rocks are abundantly met with 
in Shetland, and it would appear that all the implements in 
the Escheness hoard had been manufactured from the same 
quarry. Mr B. N. Peach, LL.D., F.R.S., informs me that 
this kind of rock, on long exposure to atmospheric agencies, 
breaks up into thin lamina, like slaty materials, so that in 
reality nature performs the first and most difficult stage in the 
manufacture of these knives 
a fact which probably accounts 
for their restriction to Shetland. Their position under a depth 
of four feet of peat, together with a whitish layer of patina 
which covers them all over, gives them, prima facie, a claim 
to considerable antiquity. Though no two specimens are 
precisely alike, there is a general, indeed striking, resemblance 
between them all; and only in one instance does the ratio 
between their longer and shorter diameters go beyond six to 
four mches—the exception measuring six by three inches. 
