If, then, as these reasons tend at least to render probable, the Cat-stane be the tombstone of Vetta, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, this venerable monolith is not only interesting as one of our most ancient national historic monuments, but it corroborates the floating accounts of the early presence of the Saxons upon our coast; it presents to us the two earliest individual Saxon names known in British history; it confirms, so far as it goes, the accuracy of the genealogy of the ancestors of Hengist and Horsa, as recorded by Bede and our early chroniclers; while at the same time it forms in itself a connecting link, as it were, between the two great invasions of our island by the Roman and Saxon--marking as it does the era of the final declinature of the Roman dominion among us, and the first dawn and commencement of that Saxon interference and sway in the affairs of Britain, which was destined to give to England a race of new kings and new inhabitants, new laws, and a new language. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 128: The farm is called "Briggs, or Colstane" (Catstane), in a plan belonging to Mr. Hutchison, of his estate of Caerlowrie, drawn up in 1797. In this plan the bridge (brigg) over the Almond, at the boathouse, is laid down. But in another older plan which Mr. H. has of the property, dated 1748, there is no bridge, and in its stead there is a representation of the ferry-boat crossing the river.] [Footnote 129: In this strategic angular fork or tongue of ground, formed by the confluence of these two rivers, Queen Mary and her suite were, according to Mr. Robert Chambers, caught when she was carried off by Bothwell on the 24th of April 1567. (See his interesting remarks "On the Locality of the Abduction of Queen Mary" in the _Proceedings of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries_, vol. ii. p. 331.)] [Footnote 130: The comparative rapidity or slowness with which bones are decomposed and disappear in different soils, is sometimes a question of importance to the antiquary. We all know that they preserve for many long centuries in dry soils and dry positions. In moist ground, such as that on which the Cat-stane stands, they melt away far more speedily. On another part of Mrs. Ramsay's property, namely in the policy, and within two hundred yards of the mansion-house of Barnton, I opened, several years ago, with Mr. Morritt of Rokeby, the grave of a woman who had died--as the tombstone on the spot told us--during the last Scottish plague in the year 1648. The only remains of sepulture which we found were some fragments of the wooden coffin, and the enamel crowns of a few teeth. All other parts of the body and skeleton had entirely disappeared. The chemical qualities of the ground, and consequently of its water, will of course modify the rapidity of such results.] [Footnote 131: _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, p. 96.] [Footnote 132: _Statistical Account of Scotland_, collected by Sir John Sinclair, vol. x. pp. 68, 75.]