1 34 Cup- and Ring-Marked Stones. [Sess. 



railway, scores of cairns are scattered over an area of about a 

 quarter of a mile square. In several cases two cairns, about 

 20 yards apart, are connected by a row or line of stones, 2 or 

 3 feet wide ; and in at least one instance three cairns, nearly 

 in a line, are joined in the same manner, and therefore re- 

 semble cups joined by ducts or grooves. Similar lines of 

 various lengths and unconnected with cairns lie up and down 

 and along the slope. Then there are several incomplete rings, 

 each about 12 yards in diameter and 2 or 3 yards broad, the 

 opening being towards the south-east. One ring is of about 

 equal breadth throughout ; another has three or four cairns in 

 its circumference ; while a third, extending only to about two- 

 thirds of a circle, has a prominent cairn at each end, and 

 reminds us strongly of the incomplete concentric ring with a 

 cwp at each end, noticed by Dr Joass, and referred to before. 

 In fact, the whole of these remarkable features, if drawn in 

 simple outline, would readily be taken for an assemblage of 

 cups, rings, ducts, and lines, and one cannot help thinking 

 that the same fundamental ideas were at work in the minds 

 of the people who raised these cairns over their dead as in 

 those of the sculptors who carved cups and rings on so 

 many of the stones connected with the places of sepulture of 

 the,ir departed friends. 



These observations are offered, for what they are worth, 

 on a most mysterious subject, — a subject " storm-charged with 

 many unsettled questions." It appears to me, however, that 

 no one theory, nor two either, will satisfactorily explain the 

 meaning or meanings of these archaic markings ; but it seems 

 certain that the ideas which gave them birth are closely con- 

 nected with the purposes of the structures wherein they are 

 so often met with. 



[The above paper was illustrated by numerous diagrams 

 and sketches.] 



