omitted by Bellenden and Holinshed in their translations. No historical notices, I believe, exist, tending to fix in any probable way the exact age of the Round Tower of Abernethy; but one or two circumstances bearing upon the inquiry are worthy of note. We are informed, both by the _Chronicon Pictorum_ and by Bede, that in the eighth or ninth year of his reign, or about A.D. 563, Brude, King of the Picts, embraced Christianity under the personal teaching of St. Columba. At Brude's death, in 586, Garnard succeeded, and reigned till 597; and he was followed by Nectan II., who reigned till 617. Fordun (_Scotichronicon_, lib. iv. cap. 12) and Wynton (book v. ch. 12), both state that King Garnard founded the collegiate Church of Abernethy; and Fordun further adds that he had found this information in a chronicle of the Church of Abernethy itself, which, is now lost; "in quadam Chronica ecclesiae de Abirnethy reperimus." But the register of the Priory of St. Andrews mentions Garnard's successor on the Pictish throne, Nectan II., as the builder of Abernethy, "hic aedificavit Abernethyn" (Innes' _Critical Inquiry_, p. 800). The probability is, that Garnard, towards the end of his reign, founded and commenced the building of the church establishment of Abernethy, and that it was concluded and consecrated in the early part of the reign of Nectan. The church was dedicated to St. Brigid; and the _Chronicon Pictorum_ (Innes' _Inquiry_, p. 778), in ascribing its foundation to Nectan I. (about A.D. 455) instead of Nectan II., commits a palpable anachronism, and very evident error, as St. Brigid did not die till a quarter of the next century had elapsed. (_Annals of the Four Masters_ under the year 525; Colgan's _Trias Thaumaturga_, p. 619.) Again, according to the more certain evidence of Bede, another Pictish king, still of the name of Nectan (Naitanus Rex Pictorum), despatched messengers, about the year 710, to Ceolfrid, Abbot of Bede's own Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, requesting, among other matters, that architects should be sent to him to build in his country a church of stone, according to the manner of the Romans et architectos sibi mitti petiit, qui juxta morem Romanorum ecclesiam in lapide in gente ipsius facerent. (_Hist. Eccles._, lib. v. c. xxi.) Forty years previously, St. Benedict or Biscop, the first Abbot of Jarrow, had brought there from Gaul, masons (caementarios) to build for him "ecclesiam lapideam juxta Romanorum morem." (See Bede's _Vita Beatorum Abbatum_.) Now it is probable that the Round Tower of Abernethy was not built in connection with the church established there by the Pictish kings at the beginning of the seventh century, for no such structures seem to have been erected in connection with Pictish churches in any other part of the Pictish kingdom; and if at Abernethy, the capital of the Picts, a Round Tower had been built in the seventh century of stone and lime, the Abbot of Jarrow would scarcely have been asked in the