of Edhiburgli, Session 1882-83. 99 
Monday, IWi February 1883. 
Shekiff FOEBES IEVINE in tlie Chair. 
The following Communications were read : — 
1, On Ancient Tenure of Land in Scotland. 
By Mr Auldjo Jamieson. 
I deem no apology due for introducing to the notice of the Eoyal 
Society the subject of the present paper. The close and accurate 
'criticism which distinguishes modern scholarship has allied all 
branches of knowledge in a common scientific system ; and the laws 
which regulate the development of human society are now recognised 
as being not less inexorable than those of which the operation on 
material objects is the more frequent theme in this room. To 
exhume the forms and types of ancient society, to subject them to 
close analysis, to identify their prototypes and trace their evolution 
in our modern life is not less a scientific study than to dig out the 
nodules of remote ages from those ancient records the rocks, and 
to subject them to that analysis which detects their identity with 
forms of life still extant. But with this difference in our present 
inquiry : the forms of existence of which the nodule is the repre- 
sentative have transmitted their characteristics through so great a 
succession and variety of forms as to make their identity with, or 
even relation to, any modern type distinguishable in most cases only 
by subtle processes of analysis ; they are themselves callous and 
dead, and have no direct contact with the life of the present day ; 
but the systems of ancient society have not undergone that process 
of extinction and disintegration in transmitting their characteristics ; 
it is less in the alembic that decomposes than by the scalpel that 
exposes, that their characteristics are discoverable; they do touch, and 
that often closely, the living present, and there is danger therefore 
that in the search for ancient truth a nerve may be sometimes 
touched that may send a thrill into living organisms in our modern 
society, aflame as some of these are at present with fevered sensa- 
tion and debate. 
I must disclaim at the outset all pretence to originality in either 
my investigations or their results ; my object and purpose will be to 
present in a brief and conventional form some of the more salient 
