Report of the Meetings for 1893. 245 



they could study all the details. He pointed to the remaining 

 foundation of a stone wall which had invested the fort, still 24 

 feet in thickness, and with a great wide ditch on its outer side, 

 and said that judging from what remained of the now ruined 

 walls, the floor of the fort appeared to have been 490 feet from 

 south-west to north-east, and 430 feet on the transverse line. 

 Mr Curie's figure of the broch, on an enlarged scale, was then 

 shown, and its entrance and chambers referred to. 



The party then proceeded to inspect the ruins. It was briefly 

 stated that in the north of Scotland the sites of between 300 and 

 400 brochs had been mapped by archaeologists, though only four 

 were known south of the Forth — one at Torwood, near Stirling, 

 one on the Cockburn Law, not far from Duns, the one before 

 them, and a smaller one on the Bow farm, on the other side of 

 the vale of Gala. They were fortified dwellings consisting of a 

 thick wall of stones without cement, enclosing a space generally 

 believed to have been open to the sky. The wall before them 

 was from 17^ to 19 feet in thickness, and the enclosed space 43 

 feet in diameter. 



Showing the company a photo of Mousa broch, Mr Wilson 

 said it was still about 40 feet in height, and the only opening in 

 its exterior was a narrow doorway and lobby conducting to the 

 interior. From the floor of the interior were openings into 

 chambers in the wall, and from one of these a stair, also in the 

 wall, led to successive tiers of small chambers in the wall but 

 with openings, or windows they might be called, to the open 

 space enclosed by the great wall. Two of these lowest chambers 

 were pointed out in the Torwoodlee specimen, and three steps of 

 the stair that had led to the series higher up the wall. The 

 Torwoodlee broch was larger considerably than anyone in the 

 north of Scotland, but smaller than the one on Cockburn Law, 

 which was described and figured in the records of the Club. In 

 the northern brochs the relics found included bone tools of various 

 kinds, coarse, hand-made pottery, and some implements of stone, 

 indicating an early historic period, though he knew of no record 

 in history or old ballad of the building of a broch. From the 

 floor of the one in which they stood, which was covered a couple 

 of inches deep with wood charcoal, were disinterred fragments of 

 Eoman glass of different colours, and representing five and pro- 

 bably six varieties of vessels. Eight varieties of pottery, also 

 Eoman, were got, and one coin of Vespasian. Two Celtic works 



