f)24 Proceedings of the Boyal Society 
The caves of Fife, both those that have sculptures and those 
without them, have almost all occasional complete perforations or 
holes cut in their sides, and in their floors and roof, capable of 
allowing a thong or rope to be passed through, as if they were 
intended to suspend or to aflix objects. 
The age of these cave-sculptures can only be fixed by approaching 
the age of the analogous figures upon the Sculptured Stones. The 
earliest of the Sculptured Stones are perhaps very old — possibly 
as far back, if not farther, than the period of the Eoman invasion. 
In opening last year a large cairn at Linlethan in Forfarshire, a 
figure of the elephant, exactly similar to those existing on our 
sculptured stones, was found on a stone lying upon the covering of 
the stone-enclosed cist. This cist contained a bronze weapon and 
an urn. The elephant sculpture was as old, therefore, as the era of 
urn burial and bronze weapons — except the carved fragment of 
stone had got by pure accident into its present position when 
the barrow was opened twenty years ago. The ancients sometimes 
buried both stone and bronze relics with their dead, after apparently 
they had iron instruments and weapons. But if the bronze dagger 
at Linlethan was a weapon used by the person buried under the 
cairn, the date is probably pre-Eoman. For when Agricola invaded 
Scotland in a.d. 81, our Caledonian forefathers had apparently 
already passed through the bronze era, as, according to Tacitus, 
they fought the Eoman legions with swords “ long and without a 
point in other words, with iron swords. 
But most of the Sculptured Stones, particularly the more elaborate 
varieties of them, were of comparatively later date, and were pro- 
bably erected as late as the eighth or tenth century. An elaborate 
specimen found buried in the old churchyard of St Vigeans, having 
upon its surface the spectacle ornament, the crescent, the mirror, 
the comb, &c., in raised figures, has an inscription on it, which is 
probably the only Pictish inscription and sentence now remaining. 
It speaks of the stone as erected to Drosten, the son of Yoret ; and 
a Pictish king Drosten was killed in the battle of Blathmig 
or Blethmont — a mile or two off — in the year 729, as we learn 
from the Annals of Tighearnach. The Fife cave sculptures at 
Wemyss are mixed up with numerous forms of crosses, particularly 
of equal-limbed Greek crosses, showing that they were cut after 
