A great variety of stone vessels, of different forms and sizes, have been found in Scotland under different circumstances, but in nearly all of them the rudeness of the attempts at ornament, and the whole form and character, suggest the probability of their belonging to the earliest period, coeval with the stone celt and hammer, and the bone and flint spears of the Scottish aborigines. Even sepulchral urns of this durable material are not uncommon, especially in the northern and western isles. Wallace thus describes one found in the island of Stronsa:--"It was a whole round stone like a barrel, hollow within, sharp edged at the top, having the bottom joined like the bottom of a barrel. On the mouth was a round stone."[184] From the engraving which accompanies this description it may be more correctly compared in form to a common flower-pot, decorated with a series of parallel lines running at intervals round it. In the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of London there are two rude stone urns, believed to be the same exhibited to the Society by Captain James Veitch in 1822, which were discovered on the demolition of a cairn in the island of Uyea, Shetland, along with many similar urns, mostly broken, and all containing bones and ashes. They are formed of _Lapis ollaris_, and are described by Mr. Albert Way, in his valuable Catalogue of the Society's Collection, as two rudely-fashioned vessels of stone, or small cists, of irregular quadrangular form, one of them having a large aperture at the bottom, closed by a piece of stone, fitted in with a groove, but easily displaced. The other has a triangular aperture on one side, and is perforated with several smaller holes regularly arranged. The dimensions of the larger are about 9½ inches by 4, and the other 7 inches by 3½. Dr. Hibbert refers to another of the same class, but probably of superior workmanship, which he saw on his visit to the Island of Uyea. It was found along with various other urns, which he simply mentions as of an interesting description, and is noted as "a well-shaped vessel, that had been apparently constructed of a soft magnesian stone of the nature of the _Lapis ollaris_. The bottom of the urn had been wrought in a separate piece, and was fitted to it by means of a circular groove. When found it was filled with bones partly consumed by fire."[185] A fragment of another such urn in the Scottish Museum is described by the donor as part of a vase of a steatitic kind of rock, found in 1829 within a kistvaen on the island of Uyea, one of the most northern of the Zetland group. At an earlier period the opening of a barrow in the island of Eigg exposed to view a large sepulchral urn containing human bones. It is described as consisting of a large round stone, which had been hollowed, with the top covered with a thin flag-stone, and was found in a tumulus which tradition assigned as the burial-place of St. Donnan, the patron saint of the