Bronze Implement found near Ourrie, Mid-Lothian. 103 
5 spot, as these would necessarily have been formed here, had it 
ever again, in full stream, flowed over its ancient bed. 
j This district of country, we know, was the abode of man at a very 
I early period ; for, passing by our historical records of its ancient 
I 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 G-reen, 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 
