364 POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
middens," which have of late been met with in various parts 
of Northern England and in Scotland, have a natural connec- 
tion in time with, and domestic relationship to, these hut- 
circles. Among the most interesting of these, are the groups 
occurring on the Bennet Hills near Burghead, those upon the 
Tarbotness Promontory, the shores of the Dornoch Birth, and 
upon the sand-dunes near Cromarty. Perhaps the most 
curious example met with as yet in England is that of 
Normanby, in Cleveland, which possesses the remarkable 
geological fact of now being covered with eighteen feet of 
ochreous clay. I need not here remark upon the great number 
of similar accumulations met with in Denmark and elsewhere 
upon the Continent, remains which have been lately seen to 
have their exact parallels in Northern America, as in the States 
of Maine and Connecticut. 
The existence of many curious stone-encircled dwelling- 
spots in Ross-shire and Sutherlandshire, analogous in cha- 
racter to the hut-circles in the Cheviots, has long been known, 
but no archaeologist has yet taken them in hand, nor has 
any anthropologist endeavoured to connect them with a par- 
ticular ancient people. In form these “ lodges," as we may 
almost call them, are flat spaces chosen out of the moorland, 
generally along a line of terraces, or upon a rising elevation, 
and marked out as a habitation by being girt about with a 
single line of whatever large stones or rock-fragments the 
neighbourhood furnished. Generally their diameter is from 
six to eight yards. In the centre we occasionally find the 
hearthstone, a smooth flat slab, usually of red or grey sand- 
stone. Around and about this, bones of the animals eaten 
have, in some examples, been found, beaten and trampled into 
the ground, and mixed with some few sea- shells and with 
many fragments of charred wood; the appearance of this 
compost being much the same as that of the great slabs of 
stalagmite (lately exhibited at the learned societies in London) 
which formed the floor of the bone-cave of Les Eyzies in the 
Dordogne, except that no stalagmite is present. Two very 
typical “ circles ” referable to this group I visited last year. 
These were situated upon a heather-clad moor about two miles 
west of Edderton (Ross-shire). My stay, however, in the dis- 
trict was too short to permit a close observation either of these 
or of other circles of like kind existing in the neighbouring 
valleys. Since my return the investigations have been carried 
on by my friend the Rev. Mr. Joass of Edderton, whose dis- 
coveries go far to prove that the ground- surface of these hut- 
circles was the dwelling-place of the primitive family during 
summer only, a subterranean apartment, rudely walled with 
slabs, housing them during the winter months. 
