490 Report oj Meetings for 1881. By Jas. Hardy. 



posts against the invasion of Jutes and Angles subsequent to tlie 

 departure of the Eomans, The Club would be interested in com- 

 paring these circular camps of a rude type, with the square and 

 still well defined camp at Lyne, a few miles west of Peebles. 

 This is a very precious relic of antiquity, which I am happy to 

 say, by my recommendation, has been saved by the present Earl 

 of Wemyss, the proprietor of the land, from progressive ruin. 

 My History contains a sketch as it was originally, and when I 

 visited it a few years since." In conclusion I give a few 

 thoughts of Mr Eobert Mathison, to whom the Club owes so much 

 for his guidance and information throughout the excursion, on 

 these pre-historic remains. He says " there is a camp on Ches- 

 ter hill on the south side of the Tweed immediately opposite the 

 Caerlee camp. The latter is in a good state of preservation, the 

 ditch and mound being nearly entire throughout the whole cir- 

 cumference of the ring. Peeblesshire abounds with camps. 

 You rarely find them oh the higher hills, mostly on the lower or 

 at a moderate height, averaging from five hundred to one 

 thousand feet above the level of the valley, and not far from the 

 river or its tributaries." Mr M. then refers to the cairns as part 

 of the camp system, rudely constructed as they are of " stones 

 gathered into heaps on the hill-sides or by the burns, and not 

 very far from the site of the camps. How strange they look ! 

 old and hoary, and grim with the magnificence of age ; and 

 beautifully crusted and stained by the growth of lichens. The 

 question naturally arises, what are they, or for what purpose 

 were those stones piled up ? Well, I think, they have been the 

 place of sepulture of the rude inhabitants of the camps. If so, 

 what a step down from the towering pyramids and polished stone 

 sarcophagus of ancient Egypt, to the rudely constructed cairn and 

 uncoffined ashes of the early Briton." 



After dinner Sir Walter Elliot gave an account of what had 

 occurred at the York meeting of the British Association of Science, 

 so far as the representative interests of the Club are involved. 

 Sir Walter will furnish a separate report on the conclusions the 

 delegates of clubs such as ours had arrived at. Sir Walter had 

 obtained a large two-handed quern from near Wolfelee, but it 

 was too heavy to transport to the meeting. It is double the bulk 

 of the ordinary sized querns, and has the hole for the handle at 

 the side instead of the top for inserting:- the handle to turn it. 



A letter was read from the Rev. George Marjoribanks, Stenton, 



