One of the most interesting recent discoveries of this primitive class of implements was made by Mr. G. Petrie, during his exploration of a subterranean dwelling or weem at Skara, in the Bay of Scales, Sandwich. A large accumulation of ashes, bones of domestic animals, the tusks of a very large wild boar, scales of fish, &c., indicated the refuse of many repasts of its aboriginal occupants; and alongside of it, apparently in coeval rubbish, was found a stone cist, containing, among other remains, about two dozen oyster shells, each perforated with a hole large enough to admit the finger. Perchance they supplied to their simple owner a collar not less esteemed than the most coveted orders of a modern peer. A curious variety of bone implements were discovered at the same time. The larger of the two objects in the annexed woodcut represents a pin or bodkin, formed from the left metatarsal bone of an ox of small size, in which the natural form of the joint has been turned to account for forming its head. It measures 5-3/10 inches long. The smaller object is also of bone. One side of the head is broken away, but the perforation has not been in the centre; it measures 3½ inches in length. Others of the tools are still more simple—mere flat pieces of bone, roughly rubbed to an edge, and indicating the merest rudiments of art and contrivance. Two other examples from the same hoard are represented here, the smallest another pin, 2⅘ inches long, formed from the lower end of the metatarsal bone of a sheep, and the larger, perhaps intended as the handle of some implement of delicate structure. It appears to be fashioned from the metatarsal or metacarpal bone of a lamb, and is notched with a rude attempt at ornament, which, however, as in the dagger formerly described, must have greatly impaired its strength.[183] Along with these were also found a number of circular discs of slate, about half an inch thick, roughly chipped into shape, and about the size of a common dessert plate. The most ready idea that can be formed of them is, that they were actually designed for a similar purpose.
These simple relics of the primitive period may not inaptly recall to us the evidences of another class of occupants of the old Caledonian forests. At the very era when the Briton had to arm himself with such imperfect weapons, the wolf was one of his most common foes. Long after the era of the Roman invasion the wild boar was a favourite object of the chase, though the huge Bos Primigenius, whose fossil remains are so frequently found in our mosses and marl pits, had then made way for the Bos Longifrons, (rarely accompanying relics of a later era than the Anglo-Roman period,) and the Urus Scoticus, or Caledonian bull, which still forms so singularly interesting an occupant of the ancient forest of Cadzow, Lanarkshire. The large tusks frequently found among later alluvial deposits attest the enormous size attained by the Caledonian boar; and its repeated occurrence on the sculptured legionary tablets of Antoninus' wall may show that it was pre-eminent among the wild occupants of the forests which then skirted the Roman vallum in the carse of Falkirk, and along the slopes of the Campsie hills; if, indeed, this was not the reason of its adoption as the symbol of the Twentieth Legion. On constructing a new road a few years since, along the southern side of the rock on which Edinburgh Castle stands, deer's horns and boars' tusks of the largest dimensions were found; and in an ancient service-book of the monastery of Holyrood, the ground which some of the oldest buildings of the Scottish capital have occupied for many centuries, is described as "ane gret forest, full of hartis, hyndis, toddis, and sic like manner of beistis." Thus is it with all that is venerable—an older still precedes it; and the docile student, when, by searching, he has found out all attainable knowledge, still sees behind him as before him an unknown, undiminished by all he has recovered. Meanwhile, it seems to become manifest, that the more minutely we investigate the primitive Scottish era, the further it recedes into the past, and approaches to the period of the first dispersion of the human family amid the strange confusion of tongues; if not indeed to that still earlier time when the sons of Javan were born after the flood, and by these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands—thus leading our thoughts, as Sir Thomas Browne quaintly, but devoutly expresses it, "unto old things and considerations of times before us, when even living men were antiquities, when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world could not be properly said, abiit ad plures, to go unto the greater number; and to run up our thoughts upon the Ancient of Days, the antiquary's truest object, unto whom the eldest parcels are young, and earth itself an infant."
FOOTNOTES:
[149] Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 46.
[150] Scots Mag., Feb. 7, 1790.
[151] MS. letters, Mr. J. C. Brown, A.R.S.A. An interesting account of the discovery of numerous flint flakes, and weapons in all stages of progress, in the celebrated ossiferous cave of Kent's Hole, near Torquay, is introduced in a subsequent chapter.
[152] Lines written on visiting a scene in Argyleshire.
[153] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. xvii. p. 115.
[154] They are described by this name of thunderstones in Sir Robert Sibbald's Portes Coloniæ et Castellæ, Plate II. Nos. 1-6.