In like manner we seem to have a dolmen-building race who from the south first touched in Cornwall, and thence spread northwards, settling on both sides of St. George's Channel, and leaving traces of their existence on the south and both coasts of Ireland, as well as in Wales and the west of England generally. Whether these two opposite currents were or were not synchronous is a question that must be determined hereafter. We shall also be in a better position to ascertain what the races were who thus spread themselves along our coasts, when we have examined the only countries from which it is probable they could have issued. [Footnote 271: 'The Sculptured Stones of Scotland.' Two vols. quarto. Published by the Spalding Club. 1856 and 1867.] [Footnote 272: A few years ago the late Mr. Rhind, of Sibster, left an estate worth more than 400_l._ per annum, to endow a Professorship of Archæology in Scotland, who was also to act as curator of the monuments themselves, but unfortunately left it encumbered by a life interest to a relative. Two years ago an attempt was made to get the Government to anticipate the falling in of the life interest, and appointing Mr. Stuart to the office at once. It was, perhaps, too much to expect so enlightened an act of liberality from a Government like ours. But their decision is to be regretted; not only because we may thereby lose altogether the services of the best qualified man in Scotland for the purpose, but more so because the monuments are themselves fast disappearing without any record of them being preserved. Agriculture is very merciless towards a big stone or a howe that stands in the way of the plough, and in so improving a country as Scotland, very little may remain for the next generation to record.] [Footnote 273: The account of these monuments is abstracted from a paper by Lieutenant Thomas, of H. M.'s surveying vessel _Woodlark_. It is the most detailed and most correct survey we have of any British group. It was published in the 'Archæologia,' xxxiv. p. 88 _et seq._] [Footnote 274: Four stones are represented as standing when Barry's view of the monument was published in 1807, and four are represented as standing in a series of etchings made by the Duchess-Countess of Sutherland from her own drawings, in 1805. If the elbow in the bridge shown in the drawing in the frontispiece is not a licence permitted to himself by the artist, my drawing is earlier than either of these. When I first purchased it I believed it to be by Daniel. His tour, however, took place in 1815. From the internal evidence this drawing must be anterior to 1805.] [Footnote 275: 'Archæologia,' xxxiv. p. 89.] [Footnote 276: 'Archæologia,' xxxiv. p. 90.]