INscRIBED RoMAN STONES OF DUMFRIESSHIRE. 127 
An altar of very chaste design, 3 ft. high, 1 ft. 84 in. broad 
at the base, and 1 ft. across the middle. At the top on each side 
are volutes that have six lance-shaped thunderbolts laid closely on 
them in two sets of three each. Between them is the usual 
bason-shaped depression. ‘The altar bears no inscription. It was 
found lying on the steps leading down to a paved rectangular de- 
pression within the preetorian buildings. 
In the list of Birrens antiquities recorded by Pennant (Zour 
iz Scotland, vol. ilil., Appendix, p. 407), as “found at the station 
at Burrens,” are four inscribed stones that have not been included 
in the present list. All of them belong for certain to the north 
of England. As Pennant’s third volume was not published till 
some years after his visit to the station, it is not difficult to under- 
stand how his note-book may have so far misled him. (See Proc. 
Soc. of Antig. of Scot., vol. xxxi., p. 150.) 
Such is an outline of the records furnished by archeology for 
a history of the Birrens garrison. They are necessarily fragment- 
ary, but they present us with some facts of importance. Unfor- 
tunately, from no other quarter can the slightest help be got in any 
attempt we may make to connect them; unless, indeed, they can 
be grouped round the Blatum Bulgium of the Antoniue Itinerary. 
But this, though highly probable, is not absolutely certain. The 
work so called is generally regarded as a compilation drawn up in 
the reign, and by order, of one or other of the emperors that bore 
the name of Antoninus. Some indeed give it an earlier date, and 
trace it to a survey of the empire undertaken in the consulship of 
Julius Cesar and M. Antonius (B.c. 44), by command of the for- 
mer. If this is so, it could not have included at first the Britannic 
Iters, which must in that case be an addition made in the course of 
some of the revisions it bears internal evidence of having under- 
gone at various times, down at least to the reign of Diocletian 
(A.D. 285-305), so as to bring it up to date. Whatever its history 
may be, the Itinerary is a document of great value, inasmuch as it 
indicates the course of the principal roads and cross roads through- 
out the whole empire by the names of places and stations situated on 
them, all the distances between towns being given in Roman miles. 
Of fifteen Britannic Iters the Second, which is the longest, runs 
in very zig-zag fashion froin Au/upiae (now Richborough, in Kent) 
