1. The Scottish long barrow, which is generally somewhat depressed in the centre, and more elevated towards one end than the other, may be assumed with little hesitation as one of the earliest forms of sepulchral earth-works. It is now comparatively rare. As the work of a thinly scattered population, it is probable that examples of it were never very numerous, and of these we may perhaps assume that the greater number have been gradually obliterated by structures of more recent date. So far as I am aware, no metallic implements have ever been found in the Scottish long barrow. Examples of pottery are also of very rare occurrence, and it is doubtful if any of these have furnished instances of the presence of the cinerary urn and its imperfectly burned contents in the primeval sepulchres. It is rather indeed from the absence of traces of art or ingenuity that we may most satisfactorily assign to this class of mounds the priority in point of antiquity. The form of the long barrow seems in itself to suggest the probability of an earlier origin than the circular tumulus, since it is only an enlargement of the ordinary grave-mound which naturally results from the displacement of the little space of earth occupied by the body, and in this respect strikingly corresponds with the most primitive ideas of a distinctive sepulchral memorial--a larger mound to mark that of the chief or priest, from the encircling heaps of common graves. In a long barrow opened in the neighbourhood of Port Seaton, East-Lothian, in 1833, a skeleton was found laid at full length within a rude cist. It indicated the remains of a man nearly seven feet high, but the bones crumbled to dust soon after their exposure to the air.[53] One of the largest Scottish earth-works of this primitive form is that already referred to, situated on the margin of the loch of Stennis, in the vicinity of the celebrated Orcadian Stonehenge. It is the only long barrow on the mainland of Orkney, but its form and proportions differ considerably from those commonly met with. It seems probable that this belongs to a late era, and owes its origin to the same Norwegian source as the neighbouring conoid earth pyramids that tower above the bowl barrows of the aboriginal Orcadians.