their disposition proved that convenience alone dictated the direction in which the bodies were laid. Other examples of irregular though methodic arrangement of the cists found in cairns have already been noted, and it would be easy to multiply similar instances. One more will suffice. In the neighbourhood of the parish church of Cairnie, Aberdeenshire, various cists have been exhumed of late years, lying in different and apparently quite irregular directions. One found in 1836, by a farm-servant while digging for sand, lay at a depth of about 2½ feet below the surface. Its interior dimensions were four feet by three feet, and it contained a human skeleton with the head laid towards the east end. At the right side was a rude hand-made urn 5¾ inches in height, which is now preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. It is obvious, from these examples, that the mere direction in which the body is laid is not in itself conclusive proof either of Pagan or Christian sepulture. But there does also occur a numerous class of instances, which seem to indicate that at some early period importance was attached to the direction in which the body was laid, and then the cist was placed north and south, or rather north-east and south-west, with the head towards the north, and designed, it may be, to look towards the meridian sun. So many instances of this are familiar to archæologists, that it seems hardly necessary to produce examples: but two of a peculiar character may be deserving of special notice. In March 1826, a farmer on the estate of Wormeston, near Fifeness, in levelling a piece of ground, discovered, at a depth of ten feet from the surface, thirty cists, disposed in two regular rows, at equal distances apart, and with the heads towards the north-east. Their arrangement was peculiar, and obviously the result of some special design. A line drawn along their ends was nearly due east and west, and from this they declined obliquely, in the direction of north-east and south-west. The whole lay parallel, and equidistant from each other, and in the centre of each of the intervening spaces an oblong stone was placed so as to abut against the sides of the adjacent cists.[89] Another group, disposed nearly similarly to this, was brought to light on the levelling of a long barrow of unusually large dimensions, in the parish of Strathblane, Dumbartonshire. Urns were found within the cists full of earth and burnt bones; and alongside of each was a column of about three feet in height, selected from basaltic rocks in the neighbourhood, many of which assume the form of regular quadrangular crystals. The position of the bodies appears to have been north and south, as the barrow, which measured sixty yards in length, lay east and west.[90]