CHAP. XVI. ] Human Bones. 318 
the practice of cannibalism.” Recent. investigations have, 
however, cast some doubts upon this statement. For in- 
- stance, Mr. Laing, M.P., read a paper before the Ethnolog- 
ical Society on the 14th of December, 1864, in which he de- 
scribed the results of his investigations of the kitchen-mid- 
dens at Keiss; in Caithness, about eight miles north of Wick. 
Large masses of periwinkle and limpet shells, mixed with 
bones, flint splinters, and bone instruments of the rudest 
sort, were found. Among the bones, part of the jaw of a 
child was discovered, which had been broken as if to get 
at the marrow ; and affording ground for presumption that 
cannibalism was prevalent, or, at least, was occasionally: re- 
sorted to among the race to which the remains refer. 
No human bones were found in the shell-heaps of either 
Boyndie or Brigzes; so that Mr. Laing’s remarks: may, aft- 
er all, prove to be a mere conjecture: “One thing,” says 
Edward, “must be observed—that no implements have as 
yet been found mixed up with our shells; but whether this 
would indicate an earlier or a later date, it would be prema- 
ture even to hint. Flint flakes, a portion of’a flint knife, 
and a stone axe or hatchet, have been found near some of 
the Morayshire mounds, but not in them. They are, how- 
ever, considered to belong to the same period. In the same 
way, the flint flakes, arrow-heads, elfshots, found in the low- 
er part of Banffshire, as also the two curious rough-looking 
bits of stones formed like knives, lately dug up near Banff, 
and now placed in the Banff Museum, doubtless belong to 
the same by-gone days. Of this, however, we have a proof 
beyond doubt, that those who had for a time sojourned at 
Boyndie had, like the men of Denmark, gone out to sea- 
fishing. This we learn from the fact that spines of large 
rays or skate, bones of other big fish, such as the cod, ling, 
and haddocks, bits of old sponge-eaten shells, as the scallop 
(Pecten maximus and opercularis), the cow shell (Cyprina 
Islandica), and the roaring buckie (/usus antiquus), are 
found in our shell-mound. Now’these can not be got ex- 
14 
