Mr. Irvine has sent the following information:--“I believe from the earliest times in Scotland the foot-stone of the grave was the chief stone, and not as now the head-stone, and that the east face of the foot-stone was the principal face to be attended to, from the idea that the dead rose at the resurrection to an upright position facing east. Compare the stone with the ancient incised markings from St. Peter’s Church, Orkney, now in the Edinburgh Museum, with the one I have etched from Sandwick, Unst, and I believe it will be seen that the keel stone existed to both. Therefore, I believe that the interment belonging to many of the standing stones will be found on the west side and not on the east.” The coffins were often formed of six or more slabs of stone. PROPORTIONS. The designs for churches in the ages of architecture were not made at random. Doubtless there existed certain rules of proportion; but doubtless they varied with times, places, and persons. Various attempts have been made in modern times to discover these rules, and in some instances with apparent success. It unfortunately happens that we have not often an intact ground plan, and if the original plan was simple, the additions render it complex. In many cases these additions were made without any regard to the proportion of the original. It appears probable that these proportions were geometric rather than arithmetical--that is to say, made by simple operations of the compasses and rulers, rather than by any proportions of numbers. The small churches of the North are valuable from not having been altered by additions. Though in the foregoing notes the proportions on which the churches were built may not have been ascertained in all cases, yet in some the coincidences are too remarkable to be chance. Although, no doubt, a system of proportions was extended to the elevations and certain details, yet as to most of these in the churches here enumerated we are in ignorance, because most of the superstructure is gone. It appears that there were, in fact, only two figures on which the proportions were founded--a circle, a square, and an equilateral triangle. For most purposes of proportion the circle and square are identical. The vesica piscis is two equilateral triangles on opposite sides of a common base, and hence equal in proportion to the half of one such triangle. There is, however, one proportion in which a square is not equivalent to a circle--the diagonal of the square the proportion of which to the side is nearly as 10 to 7. The height or length of an equilateral triangle is to half its base nearly as 7 to 4.