12G Archaic Sculpturings. 



in a most precise, mathematical, and geometrical manner. 

 It was indeed hard to get from the various records sufficiently 

 accurate illustrations. Photographs were usually useless, as 

 they gave an oblique view of the sculpturings, and many 

 of the free-hand drawings were likewise useless. Many of 

 the sculpturings, again, were so fragmentary — mutilated by 

 the weather and the hand of modern man — as to have their 

 record spoiled so far as regards utility in any scientific inves- 

 tigation. Again, unless the stone surface is on one plane, 

 even accurate drawings are inadequate. 



The members of this Society could do much useful work, 

 I am sure, in the south-western district in preparing an 

 accurate record of these markings. The best plan is to 

 make a rubbing of them, not using sheets of paper, but 

 cotton wool. The whole of the carvings on the rock-surface 

 should be thus recorded, and apparently separated sections 

 should be shown, if possible, in their relationship to the other 

 sections. The true and magnetic North should be indicated. 

 A lookout should be kept for an isolated cup well removed 

 from the main sculpturings. 



Out of the seventy-three sets in Galloway there are only 

 some five cases where the records are sufficiently precise to 

 be useful, but even these cases require revision. Two of the 

 five cases occur at Kirkmuir in Kirkmabreck parish, one at 

 ClauchandoUy, parish of Borgue ; one on a loose stone (now 

 lost) at Bardriston, Anwoth parish ; and another on a loose 

 stone at Cardoness House, previously at Laggan Hill, 

 Anwoth parish. 



While these sculpturings present markedly different 

 types, they have all been laid down with the same ideas and 

 under the same system. I observed that straight lines can 

 be drawn through certain essential parts, such as along the 

 often straightly set gutters, or through the centres of three 

 or more cups or sets of penannular rings, or that these lines 

 touch the peripheries of certain of the cups and rings. These 

 lines when produced were found to converge and meet pre- 

 cisely at common focal points, well beyond the field of the 

 sculpturings, and therefore as a rule unnoted and perhaps 

 invisible. Round each of these foci will be found to be dis- 



