174 COMPARATIVE ARCHAZOLOGY. 
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Two of the Esheness group are figured in Plate I., Nos. 3 
and 4. 
In summarising the details of researches I made as to how 
far the characters of the Esheness knives corresponded with 
other recorded Shetland knives, the following was the result. 
Ten were hoards, each containing 4 to 16 knives, of which 25 
were in the National Museum, viz., Esheness 7, Uyea 4, 
Modesty 14. The total number then known was about 100, 
of which 52 were in the National Museum, 41 in the private 
collections of Messrs Cursiter and Goudie, and 8 in the 
museums of London and Copenhagen. 
The discovery of the remarkable find at Modesty, which 
is of special importance from the standpoint of chronology, 
was made known through Mr George Kinghorn, who writes 
as follows :— 
‘* While spending my holidays in Shetland, and residing 
at the house of Mr Laurence Laurenson at Modesty, about 
four miles north of Bridge of Walls post office, I was shown 
three stone axes and three large, oval, and polished stone 
knives found by his boys in a grassy knoll in front of his house. 
The knoll is about 20 yards long and 10 yards broad, On the 
east and west it slopes gently, and on the north abruptly, the 
ground being broken where the axes were found. 
The strata are composed of— 
(1) Grass, turf, and sandy peat, about 8 inches. 
(2) Yellow peat ashes, about 5 or 6 inches. 
(3) Decomposed charred wood, about 4 or 5 inches. 
(4) Subsoil, red gravel and rock. 
The axes were found in the charred wood layer. About 
80 or go years ago, previous to his house being built, a bank 
of peat, about 4 feet thick, had been removed from the site of 
the house and the knoll, and this may account for the shallow 
depth at which the relics were found.’’ (See Proc. S.A. Scot., 
vol. xxix., p. 49.) 
On making further search in the knoll, three vessels or 
urns of steatic clay, some more stone implements, and a pair 
of saddle quern-stones were found. Fragments of the so- 
called urns show that the pottery was about half-an-inch thick, 
and made of very coarse materials mixed with small stones 
