256 Dr. Mac Culloch on the Vitrified Forts of Scotland. 



cured in that country but by a very distant land carriage, or a very 

 circuitous route by sea. It is evident that a commercial system of 

 some sort must have been established before the inhabitants of these 

 countries could have cemented their buildings with lime, however 

 they might have been acquainted with its properties. It is equally 

 a matter beyond the power of modern investigation to discover 

 whether they were the works of the aboriginal Caledonians or of 

 their Danish invaders. Neither analogy nor examination of the 

 remains throws the least light on the subject, a subject which as it 

 is beyond the reach of historical or traditional evidence, seems 

 equally divested of all those circumstances from which truth is 

 sometimes elicited. It is nevertheless a general opinion that they 

 are remains of the earliest works of ancient inhabitants. This too 

 is a proposition which appears to rest on a very vague sort of rea- 

 soning. The same Antiquaries suppose that the well known circular 

 Pictish towers were built before the use of iron, but admit that they 

 are of more modern date than the vitrified forts, from the greater 

 artifice apparent in them. It will however be clear to any one who 

 shall examine the vitrified fort near Amwoth in Galloway, that the 

 ditch which has been excavated for the purpose of giving the fort 

 a scarp all round, has been cut down by iron, or at loast by a tool of 

 metal. It is from the greater accumulation of soil on the ruins of 

 • the vitrified walls, an accumulation often sufficient to conceal them 

 entirely from the view, that we are (if from any thing) entitled to 

 consider them as erections of a date more ancient than the towers 

 of Glen Elg or Dun Dornadilla, or than any of the works as yet 

 examined in which unvitrified masonry has been used. But it is 

 superfluous to pursue these archaeological difficulties further. 



The question on which the two contending parties have been 

 most at issue, was, whether the vitrification was the result of design 



