Anniversary Address. 213 



cropping up on hills or other high ground ; these are on the 

 face of a sandstone cliff rising perpendicularly from the bed 

 of the Coquet, a very short way above the level of the sea. 

 The most typical of the former are composed of concentric 

 circles with a radial groove passing from the centre to the 

 circumference, or beyond it. In these now under observa- 

 tion, about six in number, there is no radial groove, but the 

 figure in the most distinct is of a spiral form somewhat re- 

 sembling those figured by Mr Tate in his paper, published 

 in our Transactions for 1864, from sketches by Capt. Carr, 

 RE., as occurring on rock temples at Malta ; with this re- 

 markable difference, however, that the latter were in relief, 

 those on the Coquet, like all others in Northumberland, in- 

 cised. The first inscription seen by Mr Dand from a boat 

 on the river is of a different character from any of the others, 

 the outer circle being composed of a number of dots or pits, 

 at perhaps two inches distance from each other, in this, 

 somewhat resembling an inscription discovered by Mr Tate, 

 at Jedburgh, but not in situ, and shown in Plate XL, Fig, 

 6 of the illustrations to his paper, above alluded to. The 

 entire diameter appeared from the boat, from which the in- 

 spection was made by small detachments of our party at a 

 time, to be about a foot, and was apparently the largest ob- 

 served ; it faced the river ; others were on a different aspect 

 of the rock, facing nearly at right angles to the one first ob- 

 served. One of our members noticed that two of the spiral 

 figures, close to each other, were in fact continuous, the line 

 being carried from one to the other. The inscriptions are 

 from about ten to fifteen feet above the present level of the 

 river, but at the remote period at which they were doubt- 

 less executed the channel of the river would be at a much 

 higher elevation. It is to be hoped that a minute and ac- 

 curate account of these inscriptions with engravings, may be 

 supplied for our Proceedings, by some member having the 

 means of closer observation than we had. Some of the more 

 adventurous of our party got a nearer view than those in 

 the boat, by scrambling along the face of the rock, not with- 



