Osteological Remains found in a PicVs House. 141 



The Communications read were as follows : — 



1. Notice of various Osteological Remains found in a " Pict's House" in 

 the Island of Harris. By James M'Bain, M.D., R.N. (The speci- 

 mens were exhibited.) 



Dr M'Bain said, that the fragments of bone which he exhibited were 

 brought from the Island of Harris, by Captain Thomas, of Her Majesty's 

 surveying vessel Woodlark. They were found during last summer in one of 

 those interesting buildings commonly called " Picts' Houses," which was 

 opened at a place named Nisibost, in the Island of Harris, for the purpose 

 of extending former observations made by Captain Thomas upon these 

 ancient structures. The fragments of bone had been put into the hands 

 of Dr M'Bain, in order to determine to what species of animals they 

 belonged. And as there is historical evidence that the antiquity of 

 " Picts' Houses" extends at least beyond a thousand years, he thought the 

 remains of animals preserved in these buildings worthy of being consi- 

 dered zoologically, in reference to the extinction or extirpation of species. 

 An anatomical description of the bone fragments, fifteen in number, was 

 given. They belonged to the following species of animals : — The dog ; 

 the common seal ; the red deer (part of the antlers of which had been cut 

 and fashioned by a sharp instrument) ; the " Bos longifrons," character- 

 ised by the form of the cancellous horn-core, which formed one of the 

 specimens ; the sheep, of small size ; and the right middle metacarpal or 

 cannon bone of a small horse, rather larger than that in the skeleton of a 

 Shetland pony in the Barcleian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons 

 of Edinburgh. These fragments of bone were found on the clay floor of 

 a " Pict's House," buried under a mass of drift sand ten feet thick ; and 

 in an adjacent cell, a stone querne or hand-mill for grinding corn was 

 discovered, made of hornblende slate, but too much decomposed for pre- 

 servation. Dr M'Bain stated that "Picts' Houses" had been divided 

 into two classes — the superficial, or those which are built upon the natural 

 surface of the soil; and the subterranean, or those which are excavated 

 to a greater or less extent beneath the surface. That examples of each 

 class existed in the Orkney Islands, where several " Picts' Houses" had 

 been explored. They had generally been found to contain the bones of 

 domestic animals, such as the sheep, ox, and horse, along with abundance 

 of shells of the edible species of mollusca. In the ruins of a M Pict's 

 House" near Skaill, on the mainland of Orkney, the tusk of a wild boar 

 was discovered, "its presence," as it had been remarked, " taking us 

 back to a very early period." In a subterranean " Pict's House" opened 

 at Savrock, near Kirkwall, in 1848, the head and part of the horns of the 

 red deer were found, along with the bones of sheep, cattle, horses, and a 

 large bone of a whale. The red deer must soon have become extinct in 

 Orkney, for there is no certain historic record of its being alive in the 

 islands, although the contrary seemed to be indicated by the fact that a 

 headland and a harbour still retained the names of Deerness and Deer- 

 sound. Reference was then made to a collection of bone fragments in the 

 Antiquarian Museum of Edinburgh, presented by A. H. Rhind, Esq. of 

 Sibster, obtained from a "Pict's House" at Kettleburn, in the county 

 of Caithness. This collection contains the bones of the goat, pig, rat, 

 and fish, besides those belonging to the same species of animals as the 

 fragments from Nisibost. Dr M'Bain concluded by saying, that the 

 investigation of " Picts' Houses," Pictish broughs or castles, tumuli, and 

 other structures supposed to be of contemporaneous age, had hitherto 

 been undertaken chiefly upon archaeological and ethnographical consider- 

 ations. That the primitive construction of these buildings, especially in 



VOL. II. 



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