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PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



The walls, which rested on their edges on a "bed of limestone, had the customary 

 single rough slab on each side and at each end. The cover also was a single flat 

 massive stone. The peculiarity of this interment was the presence in more than 

 one of the cists of a slab in the middle, extending from end to end, which divided 



Side and end. 



Interior. 



Figs. 14, 15. — Cousland short cist. 



the cavity into two parallel compartments (fig. 15) each of which contained a 

 skeleton ; * in the undivided cists only a single skeleton was present. The sand 

 and earth in the cist were riddled without fragments of an urn or any implements 

 being discovered. 



Pentland Hills. — I am indebted to the late Mr John Henderson for an account 

 of a short cist from a cairn on the East Cairn Hill. The cairn formed a roundish 



Fig. 16.— Flint, Belfield. 



Fig. 17. — Flint, Pentland cairn. 



mound, in the centre of which the cist was exposed resting on the sandstone rock. 

 The sides and ends were each formed by a single sandstone slab, and the cover was a 

 massive unwrought slab. In its internal measurement the cist was 3 feet 8 inches 

 long, 2 feet broad and 1 foot 3 inches deep. It contained earth with which 

 numerous fragments of calcined human bones were mingled. Three barbed flint 

 arrow-heads were also found, one of which Mr Henderson presented to the 



* In Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot,, vol. xxxii, 1898, is an account by Mr Alex. Hutcheson of a bronze-age cist found 

 on a hill at West Mains, Auchterhouse, Forfar. It contained a bronze dagger, and two collections of calcined bones, 

 and had a separate interment in a smaller compartment. Mr Hutcheson also referred to a short cist in the 

 Barnhill burial mound (Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., vol. xi) which was longitudinally divided into two parallel 

 compartments, resembling therefore the Cousland grave. 



