Bronze Implement found near Currie, Mid-Lothian. 103 



spot, as these would necessarily have been formed here, had it 

 ever again, in full stream, flowed over its ancient bed. 



This district of country, we know, was the abode of man at a very 

 early period ; for, passing by our historical records of its ancient 

 occupation as comparatively recent, the short stone cists or graves 

 of its early inhabitants have been discovered in the immediate 

 vicinity ; and in our Museum we have the well-formed skull and 

 ornamented clay urn or drinking-cup taken from a grave of this 

 early character at Juniper Green, on the opposite side of the river. 

 Mr Bruce also informed me that various short cists of a similar 

 character, the stone slabs of which I saw, were exposed when his 

 water-supply ponds were being made, on the slope of the south 

 bank towards the upper extremity of this little valley, imme- 

 diately above and overlooking this old river bed ; and it is to this 

 rather indefinite, but undoubtedly early period, or to one not much 

 later, I am inclined to consider this implement or razor of bronze 

 to have belonged. Similar interments in these short cists have 

 been discovered over an extended range of our country, from the 

 northern counties of Scotland, even towards the south of England, 

 showing, apparently, in this respect, a close resemblance in the 

 customs of these early inhabitants. And from historic record we 

 learn, that at least about half a century before the Christian era, 

 the fashion of partial shaving of the person prevailed in Britain, as 

 Caesar, in the fourth chapter of his second book " De Bello G-allico," 

 informs us — " the Britons shaved the whole body, with the excep- 

 tion of the head and the upper lip," so that razors of some kind 

 must have been generally used, at that early period. 



It is interesting to notice the analogy in character with the 

 bronze implement found in Switzerland, of this one, found among 

 the undisturbed gravel, with its overlying beds of silt, in the valley 

 of a Scottish river, some 400 feet above the level of the sea, 

 implying, no doubt, changes in the district which, as well as the 

 type of the weapon itself, all speak of a great antiquity. We 

 can at present glean but little information as to the exact period 

 of the early occupation of the piled lake dwellings of Switzerland ; 

 there seems no reason, however, to assume anything like what may 

 be called geologic periods of time, as necessary to account for the 

 antiquity of their remains. Antiquaries, arranging the various relics 

 found, speak of them as belonging to the so-called ages of stone, of 

 bronze, or of iron ; but we know comparatively little importance 

 can be assigned to any such artificial and merely assumed periods 

 of unmeasured time, and we find in our own country various kinds 



