Some of the rarer forms of the stone vessels found in Scotland are much more suggestive of domestic purposes. One in my own possession, found in Glen Tilt, is neatly formed in native green marble, with two handles, not unlike the more modern Scottish quech. Another, in the Scottish Collection, found in Atholl, looks like a stone soup-ladle; and a third, of oblong form, as shewn here, measuring 12 by 8½ inches, was found at Brough, in Shetland, in excavating the area of one of the large circular buildings of un-cemented stone, styled Pech's Burghs. It can hardly be more fitly described than as a stone tureen with handles carved at either end. Others met with under similar circumstances are wide and shallow, and nearly resemble the large stone basins figured here, found in the chambers of the celebrated cairn of Newgrange, in the neighbourhood of Drogheda. [Illustration: Stone Basin, Shetland.] [Illustration: Stone Basin, Newgrange.] It is a remarkable fact, that these vessels, thus laboriously hewn or wrought out of stone, should be most frequently found either in the neighbourhood of the rude monolithic structures, or of other apparently contemporary works of the earliest period. The very imperfect nature of many of their decorations, however, suffice to prove that they are the work of men destitute of efficient metallic tools, and who were little likely to attempt the hopeless task of hewing the giant columns of their temples into artificial forms. Many of these vessels, indeed, notwithstanding the attempts at decoration visible upon them, exhibit much less symmetry or finished workmanship even than the stone hammers and axes of the same period. So far as I am aware, the Druidical patera, so frequently found in Scotland, is peculiar to it, no similar vessel having been discovered among the primitive remains either of England or Ireland. In the remoter districts of Scotland these ancient vessels were regarded till recently with the same superstitious awe and dread which we have already seen attached to other unfamiliar relics of the same remote era. Mr. Colin M'Kenzie, in describing the antiquities of the island of Lewis, from personal observations made towards the close of last century, remarks in reference to the group of standing stones at Classernish, on the west side of that island, with its remarkable large central stone, surrounded by a deep hollow which retains the rain water:--"Were a ditch cut across the circle to a tolerable depth, some utensils, ashes, &c. might be found to throw more light on the subject. I have been told that a stone bowl was found, and afterwards thrown, through a superstitious dread, into the hollow round of the central stone."[188] [Illustration: Stone Basin, Newgrange.]