The same remarks, which I have just ventured to make, as to the proper mode of investigating the classes of our larger archaeological subjects, hold equally true also of those other classes of antiquities of a lighter and more portable type, which we have collected in our museums; such, for instance, as the ancient domestic tools, instruments, personal ornaments, weapons, etc., of stone, flint, bone, bronze, iron, silver, and gold, which our ancestors used; the clay and bronze vessels which they employed in cooking and carrying their food; the handmills with which they ground their corn; the whorls and distaffs with which they span, and the stuff and garments spun by them, etc. etc. It is only by collecting, combining, and comparing all the individual instances of each antiquarian object of this kind--all ascertainable specimens, for example, of our Scottish stone celts and knives; all ascertainable specimens of our clay vessels; of our leaf-shaped swords; of our metallic armlets; of our grain rubbers and stone-querns, etc. etc.--and by tracing the history of similar objects in other allied countries, that we will read aright the tales which these relics--when once properly interrogated--are capable of telling us of the doings, the habits, and the thoughts of our distant predecessors. It is on this same broad and great ground--of the indispensable necessity of a large and perfect collection of individual specimens of all kinds of antiquities for safe, sure, and successful deduction--that we plead for the accumulation of such objects in our own or in other public antiquarian collections. And in thus pleading with the Scottish public for the augmentation and enrichment of our Museum, by donations of all kinds, however slight and trivial they may seem to the donors, we plead for what is not any longer the property of this Society, but what is now the property of the nation. The Museum has been gifted over by the Society of Antiquaries to the Government--it now belongs, not to us, but to Scotland--and we unhesitatingly call upon every true-hearted Scotsman to contribute, whenever it is in his power, to the extension of this Museum, as the best record and collection of the ancient archaeological and historical memorials of our native land. We call for such a central general ingathering and repository of Scottish antiquities for another reason. Single specimens and examples of archaeological relics are, in the hands of a private individual, generally nought but mere matters of idle curiosity and wild conjecture; while all of them become of use, and sometimes of great moment, when placed in a public collection beside their fellows. Like stray single words or letters that have dropt from out the Book of Time, they themselves, individually, reveal nothing, but when placed alongside of other words and letters from the same book, they gradually form--under the fingers of the archaeologist--into lines, and sentences, and