To all these guesses Sir James Simpson opposed the solution that the markings are merely decorative. 'From the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, &c, down to our own day, circles, single or double, and spirals have formed, under various modifications, perhaps the most common types of lapidary decoration.' It appears in Polynesian tattooing, this love of spirals and volutes. But, added Sir James, 'that they were emblems or symbols, connected in some way with the religious thoughts and doctrines of those that carved them, appears to me to be rendered probable, at least, by the position and circumstances in which we occasionally find them placed,' as on the lids of stone coffins and mortuary urns. Their date must be 'very remote.' They preceded writing and tradition. They are found in company with polished neolithic stone weapons, as in Brittany, without any remains of the metals, save in one case, of gold. The markings are certainly, in Australia, earlier than the use of metals. Sir James found by experiment that the markings could be made even on Aberdeen granite with a flint celt and a wooden mallet. He reckoned them earlier than the arrival of the Celtic race, and asked for evidence of their existence in Africa, America, or Polynesia. He did not know the Fijian example in Williams's work on the Fijians, nor the American and Australian examples. Sir James did not live to hear much about these mysterious marks in remote and savage lands. But, in 1875, Professor Daniel Wilson discovered, or rather reported his discovery of, cups and rings on a granite boulder in Georgia. The designs are quite of the familiar orthodox sort, and rocks covered with deep cup-marks occur in Ohio.[2] Now there are romantic antiquaries, all for Druids and Phœnicians; and there are sardonic antiquaries, who like to rub the gilt off the gingerbread. Dr. Wilson was of the latter class, and explained the cups as holes made by early men in grinding stone pestles. The concentric rings may have been drawn round the cups 'for amusement.' This is clamping, but early man did not use stone kists and the inner walls of sepulchres as grindstones; yet on these the marks occur. Nor would he climb an almost inaccessible rock to find his grindstone; yet the summit of such a rock has the decorations, in the parish of Tannadyce (Forfarshire). We may, therefore, discard Dr. Wilson's theory as a general solution of the problem. Sir James Simpson left it with the answer that the marks are decorative, _plus_ religious symbolism.[3] His guess, as I think I can prove, or, at least, cause to seem probable, was correct. The cups and circles, with other marks, were originally decorative, with a symbolical and religious meaning in certain cases. How I have reached this conclusion I go on to show.