It may appear to some a service of little value, the unrolling of these "mute inglorious" records. Yet somewhat is surely gained when we reach the beginnings of things, and substitute for the old historic mist-land of myth and fable, a coherent and intelligible, though dry and somewhat meagre array of facts and legitimate deductions. It is no longer needful, however, to defend the object of our research. It is to some extent the same which the ethnologist is pursuing by a different route; though the palæontological investigations of the archæologist have yet to establish their true value in the estimation of men of science by the nature of their results. For this we wait in hope. I would only meanwhile repeat, that we cannot be justified in concluding any knowledge which once existed to be utterly lost beyond recall; and if the geologist has been able to recover so much from annals that seemed to have been folded up and laid aside ere this race was summoned into being to people a renovated world, surely we ought not to despair of being yet able to fill up our meagre outline with many details which shall satisfy the severest demands of inductive philosophy, and rest their claims to acceptance not on theory but on fact. FOOTNOTES: [195] Prichard's Natural Hist. of Man, 3d edit. p. 108. [196] Ibid. p. 21. [197] Natural History of Man, p. 186. [198] On the Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, by Professor Nillson of Lund. [199] Natural History of Man, pp. 192, 193. [200] Morton's Crania Americana, p. 16. [201] Natural History of Man, p. 193. [202] Archæol. Journal, vol. vi. pp. 27-39, 123-136. [203] In taking these measurements I have been efficiently assisted by Mr. John Zaglas, anatomical assistant to Professor Goodsir of Edinburgh University, and by Dr. John Alexander Smith. Nearly all of the measurements have been repeated several times, and may therefore be received as accurate. [204] Archæol. Scot. vol. iv. pp. 43, 44. [205] MSS. Library S.A. Scot. Nov. 28, 1834. [206] Two mortaria, obtained from this shaft, along with the iron spear-head, are now in the possession of John Miller, Esq. of Millfield, C.E. The spear-head will be found figured in a later chapter. The skull is now in the possession of John Alexander Smith, M.D., but it is his intention to deposit it in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. [207] Regist. Prior. S. Andree, p. 114. Lulach the Foolish is mentioned by Scottish chroniclers as reigning after Macbeth for four months, when he also was slain, and interred at Iona.--Annals of the Scots, A.D. 1058. [208] Phrenological Journal, vol. vi. p. 144. [209] Report of British Association for Advancement of Science. Seventeenth Session, 1848. P. 32. [210] Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, vol. ii. p. 110. [211] Archæol. Scotica, vol. iii. p. 44. [212] MSS. Letter, Libr. Soc. Antiq. Scot., December 8, 1817. [213] MSS. Letter, Mr. William Duncan, 13th December 1838.