The following work, embracing within its plan such a comprehensive scheme of Scottish Archæology as has not been hitherto attempted, has been undertaken under the conviction that this science is the key to great truths which have yet to be reached, and that its importance will hereafter be recognised in a way little dreamt of by those students of kindred sciences, who, while busied in investigating the traces of older but inferior orders of being, can discern only the objects of an aimless curiosity in relics pertaining to the human species. That such, however, should still be the case, is far more the fault of the antiquary than of the student of other sciences. It is his misfortune that his most recondite pursuits are peculiarly exposed to the laborious idling of the mere dabblers in science, so that they alternately assume to the uninterested observer the aspect of frivolous pastime and of solemn trifling. I cannot but think that a direct union with the associated sciences, and an incorporation especially with the kindred researches of the ethnologist, while it might, perchance, give some of its present admirers a distaste for the severer and more restricted study, would largely contribute to its real advancement, and free its truly zealous students from many popular trammels which at present cumber its progress. Meanwhile the archæologist may derive some hope from the remembrance that astronomy was once astrology; that chemistry was long mere alchemy; that geology has only in our own day ceased to be a branch of unreasoning antiquarianism; and that ethnology has scarcely yet passed the jealously guarded porch, as the youngest of all the recognised band of sister sciences.