A very general impression prevails that the primitive cists are invariably found lying north and south. But this is a hasty conclusion, which has been the more readily adopted from the distinction it seems to furnish in contrast to the medieval custom of laying the head towards the west, that the Christian might look to the point from whence he expected his Saviour at his second coming. Abundant evidence exists to disprove the universal use of any particular direction in laying the cists or interring the dead in the primitive period. A few examples will suffice to show this. In 1824 a number of cists were discovered in making a new approach to Blair Drummond House, near the river Teith, Stirlingshire. They were of the usual character, varying in size, but none of them large enough to hold a full-grown body laid at length. Some contained urns of various dimensions, with burnt bones and ashes, while in others the bones had no appearance of having been exposed to fire. The urns were extremely rude and simple in form, and no metallic relics were discovered among them. Here, therefore, we have a primitive place of sepulture, in a locality already noted for some remarkable evidences of very remote population. But the cists lay irregularly in various directions, giving no indication of any chosen mode or prevailing custom.[84] In 1814 several cists were discovered in the parish of Borthwick, Mid-Lothian, of the ordinary character and proportions, and in some cases containing urns, one of which is now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Others have since been discovered in the same neighbourhood at various times, but like those on the banks of the Teith, "they were placed without any regard to order."[85] In constructing the new road to Leith, leading from the centre of Bellevue Crescent, Edinburgh, in 1823, several stone cists were found, of the usual circumscribed dimensions and rude construction of the primitive period, but being disposed nearly due east and west, were assumed without further evidence to be "of course since the introduction of Christianity."[86] Another similar relic of the aboriginal occupants of the site of the modern Scottish capital was found in 1822, in digging the foundation of a house on the west side of the Royal Circus. In this case the cist lay north and south, but the head was laid at the south end. The whole skeleton, with the exception of a few of the teeth, crumbled to dust on being touched.[87] In a cist discovered in 1790, under a large cairn in the parish of Kilbride, the skeleton lay with its head to the east. Such was its great age, that it also speedily crumbled to dust.[88] Within the district of Argyleshire, now occupied by the villages of Dunoon and Kilmun, many primitive cists have been exposed, rudely constructed of unhewn slabs of the native schistose slate, and some of them containing lance and arrow-heads of flint, and other equally characteristic relics, but the irregularity of