Perhaps a coin now in my possession, which was found some years ago in a field on the bank of the river Went in Yorkshire, near large quantities of ancient heavy iron slag, may be taken as giving some clue to the date of the older ironworks. It is an ancient British coin of the type of the quarter stater of Philip II. of Macedon. The British coinage is supposed to have been in existence at least as far back as 150 B.C., and this is one of the early types. The querns frequently found in all parts of the Highlands shew that the ancient inhabitants grew some corn,--that they had some acquaintance with "the staff of life." It seems a reasonable inference, that they used iron implements for tilling their lands and securing their crops. It is certain that some iron weapons, tools, and implements, besides those employed in agriculture, were in use in the Highlands in those old days. An iron axe-head, of the shape of the bronze celt figured among our illustrations, and with the aperture for the handle similarly in a line with its axis instead of at right angles to it, was found in 1885 in the garden at Inveran; its remains are much eaten by rust, but there is enough to shew that this iron axe is of an old type. It may be objected, that if iron implements for peace or war were extensively used in ancient days there would be more relics of them. The obvious reply to such an objection is, that iron is so liable to oxidation that most of the smaller iron articles of ancient times must have perished from that cause. Many of the small masses of rust-cemented gravel and earth, found everywhere, may have originally had for their nucleus an ancient iron implement, or a fragment of one. If it be allowed that the Picts or other early inhabitants of the north used iron tools and weapons, the question at once arises,--Where and how did they procure them? The remains of the ancient class of ironworks supply the answer. Those so-called savages well knew where to procure iron, and how to fabricate from it the articles they required,--another proof that the Picts were by no means the uncivilised barbarians that some people suppose.