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succeeding Romans afterwards possessed themselves of in their 
other attempts to subdue Scotland.” 
Of the two entrenchments on Birrenswark, the southern is the 
larger, measuring internally, according to the 25-inch Ordnance 
map, 850 feet by 600 feet. The smaller or northern is 
950 feet by 350 feet. Both of them are roughly rectilinear, 
and, in the words of Gordon, ‘‘ surrounded by two ramparts and 
a ditch in the middle.” In the ramparts are several openings or 
gates, defended by small quasi-circular mounds a short distance 
in front of each. On the flat top of the hill there were in Roy’s 
time, some thirty years later, traces of several curvilinear works, 
and, at its foot, remains of two small redoubts. Gordon represents 
the two principal camps as joined by “a huge rampart of stone 
and earth running round the east end of the hill.” This connec- 
tion led him to look upon them as forming one great camp. In 
the same quarter Roy saw ‘imperfect vestiges of two lines, 
including between them two weaker forts, whereof one is square 
and the other circular.” 
Two miles and a half south-east from Birrenswark is Birrens 
—-an earthwork of a different type. The plan in the “ Military 
Antiquities ” shows it to have had the form of a parallelogram. 
Its sides, at least three of them, were once defended by from 
four to seven ramparts of earth, with intervening ditches. 
Those on the south, if they ever existed, had ere Roy’s 
day been swept away by the waters of the Mein; and those 
on the east and west have also all but disappeared. The 
exterior dimensions were 1050 feet by 700 feet. Of the other 
earthworks in North Britain it most nearly resembles Ardoch, 
and Lyne, near Peebles. Roy figures two more that show 
in his plates traces of having been surrounded in a similar way— 
Castledykes near Carstairs, and Strageth in Perthshire. All 
these he sets down as Roman Stations. 
In 1731 a notable discovery was made at Birrens. This was 
the sculptured figure of the goddess Brigantia, an altar dedicated 
to Mercury, and the inscribed pedestal of a statue of Mercury, 
all of which, after being for many years part of the collection of 
antiquities in Pennicuik House, are now in the National Museum, 
Edinburgh—the gift of the late Sir George Clerk, Bart. The 
circumstances under which they were secured by ‘‘Baron” Clerk 
had best be related in his own words. In a marginal note to 
“ Memoirs of My Life” he writes :—‘‘About this time (1731) the 
