80 Tue Brus INSCRIPTION AT ANNAN. 
in any case that date is far too early and exceptional to be 
accepted. No such inscription of so early a date appears 
to be known in Great Britain. Moreover, the grounds of 
condemnation apply not merely to the use of these numerals, 
but also to the form of the numeral 3 itself in the inscription. 
A universal characteristic of the Arabic figure 3 until long 
after 1300 was that, instead of the under lobe being the 
perfect counterpart of the upper lobe, as is very nearly the 
case on this stone, the under lobe is elongated, while the 
upper one is a semi-circular curve. The typical early figure 
IS 5, NOL se 
The inference which seems to be almost an irreducible 
necessity is that the date 1300 is probably not original, but 
an addition to the original inscription. This may seem at 
first sight an admission perilous to the greater question of 
the authenticity of the original inscription proper, but to 
the present investigator at anyrate that view of the matter 
does not present any constraining force. It is easy to sup- 
pose that a sixteenth or seventeenth century chisel has by 
the addition of the date not only indicated an intelligent 
appreciation of the original inscription; but the wielder of 
the chisel has by the very form of his figures betrayed his 
own date, while leaving unimpaired the verity of the 
original inscription and its faithfulness to its own period. 
The possible major contention against the stone that it is in 
its entirety, a forgery, a production three or four centuries 
later than the day of the last Bruce lord of Annandale, must 
answer the points :—(1) that the lettering of the inscription, 
equally in alphabet, diction, and arrangement, appears to be 
in essential harmony with the epigraphy of the late thir- 
teenth century; (2) that its tenor conforms to historical 
facts; and (3) that it is as difficult to imagine a motive for 
such a forgery as it is to postulate the necessary skill on the 
part of the forger. It would have required a forger of genius 
to design an inscription so correctly adjusted to historical 
fact and surroundings, and at the same time to execute the 
design in so generally complete a correspondence with his- 
torical epigraphy. 
Thus taking as a necessary, if not proved, presumption 
