showing that at that age at least any ethnographic theory that would give those stones exclusively to either race can hardly be maintained.
The two races seem then to have followed the fashion of the day as they did in ruder times. Except in the instance of the St. Vigean's stone on which Sir James Simpson read the name of Drosten,[1] ascribing it with very fair certainty to the year 729 A.D., none of the 101 stones illustrated in the splendid volumes of the Spalding Club contains hardly a scrap of alphabetic writing. Throughout they preferred a strange sort of Heraldic symbolism, which still defies the ingenuity of our best antiquaries to interpret. It was a very perverse course to pursue, but while men did so, probably as late as Sueno's time, A.D. 1008,[2] it is needless to ask why men set up rude stones to commemorate events or persons when they could have carved or inscribed them; or why, in fact, as we would insist
on doing, they did not avail themselves of all the resources of the art or the learning which they possessed?
The other rude-stone monuments of Scotland are neither numerous nor important. Daniel Wilson enumerates some half-dozen of dolmens as still existing in the lowlands and in parts of Argyllshire, but none of them are important from their size, nor do they present any peculiarities to distinguish them from those of Wales or Ireland; while no tradition has attached itself to any of them in such a manner as to give a hint of their age or purpose. Besides these, there are a number of single stones
