SCIEi^TIFIC SUMMARY. 
245 
■vviiicli the grains of \vlieat are still recognisable, fimiisli conclusive evidence 
of the mode of preparing food from these cereals. The gTam was evidently- 
triturated very imperfectly between plates of stone, and the dough was bilked 
under hot stones and ashes. Three leguminous j)lants were found ; two 
varieties of the apple, and cherries and plums. Flax was found in large 
quantity, and immense numbers of strawberries and raspberries. — Yide Bih- 
liotheque Universelle, October. 
Contents of Skull Mounds at Keiss, in Caithness. — At a meeting of the 
Anthropological Society, held on Tuesday, December 6th, Mr. Laiug read a 
paper on the organic reniams found in a kist near Keiss. In the lowest 
stratum of the mounds were discovered, mingled with the skulls of limpets 
and periwinkles (which appear to have constituted the principal articles of 
food of the people of those times), some bones of oxen, horses, and pigs, and 
stone implements of the rudest possible kind. In continuing his explora- 
tions, Mr. Laing cRine upon some kists, which consisted of a slap of stone, 
just large enough to hold the body of a man, and inside, covered Avith sand, he 
discovered the skeletons of those who had been interred. Most of them Avere 
very short, not being more than 5 feet 4 inches long, and in these kists no 
implements of any kind Avere found ; but in two instances he discovered 
kists of a much larger size, in Avdiich the skeletons measured 6 feet and 6 feet 
4 inches. These AA^ere presumed to have been the chiefs of the race ; and, 
buried Avith one of them, Avere fifteen stone implements of small size, and of 
the rudest character, exhibiting a loAver degree of art than the flint imple- 
ments found with the bones of extinct animals m tertiary geological deposits. 
Mr. Laing regarded some of the skulls as jrresenting the character of those 
of Ancient Britons, and others as being of negro type ; but Professor OAven, 
who Avas present, said that the skulls differed in several essential particulars 
from the form of the Ethiopian skull : one of them might be mistaken from 
part of its conflguration for that of an Austrahan, but the small size of the 
molar teeth showed that it Avas of a different type. In commenting upon a 
child’s jaw-bone, which Mr. Laing exhibited, the Professor observed that he 
was Avell acquamted AAuth the marks made by savages on the jaws of animals 
they devoured as food, and he feared the evidence which the child’s jaAv 
afforded tended to prove that our progenitors, Avho inhabited Scotland at a 
remote period, must have been cannibals. The dental cavity is fllled AAuth' 
nerve-pulp, which savages relish, and the child’s jaAv-bone indicated that it 
had been broken to extract that substance. 
The Controversy ujpon English and Alpine Geology been main- 
tained between Mr. Ruskin and Professor Jukes, and Avhich will be found in 
full in -the pages of the Reader, is so full of personalities on both sides, and 
so devoid of the philosophical elements of discussion, that Ave merely allude 
to it to prevent our readers giving further attention to the subject in this 
phase of its development. 
The Epochal and Detrital Theory of Geology is somewhat cleA^erly, though, 
we think, partially considered in a pamphlet AAnritten by some one aa4io signs 
himself a near kinsman of Thomas Didymus. The question AA’hich the author 
of this brochure raises, relates to the supposed derh^ation of all subsequent 
dej)osits from the granite. He is at great pains to shoAv, by a series of 
chemical calculations, that the granite could not have supplied all the lime 
