most inquisitive.* Religious revivalism, and its concomitants -insanity and functional derangement-are very common in these islands.

I believe that a genuine interest has been excited amongst the people of Zetland respecting the anthropology of these islands. Much yet undoubtedly remains to be done, and it will be the duty of this Society to do all she can towards accomplishing the labour she has begun. There will after a time be found inquirers on the spot who will be both willing and competent to undertake explorations; but they will require from time to time an official visit from some delegate of this Society to direct and encourage their labours. We shall thus carry out one of our primary objects,-that of advancing genuine science by the acquisition of new facts, and thereby laying up a store of reliable information as a groundwork for our future investigations into the Archaic Anthropology of the British Isles.

I was invited by the Secretary of the Zetland Natural History Society to exhibit and describe the weapons I had found. I consented to do this, in the hope that similar implements might be found in other parts of the island. But I regret to have to state that I was prevented doing this, owing to the objections which the deacons of the Congregational Church expressed to a lecture being given by me in their sacred edifice. I was told that it had been discovered that I had taken the chair at some meeting in London at which Dr. Colenso had read a paper. The charge being unfortunately correct, I bowed with all humility to the decision! I am glad, however, to say that this refusal had the effect of exciting the young men of the place to inquiry, and that the publications of the Anthropological Society are being sought for with avidity. But I regretted to be obliged to take these implements away without first publicly exhibiting them.

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XXIV.-Report of Zetland Anthropological Expedition. By RALPH TATE, F.G.S., F.A.S.L., ETC.

As desired, this report will simply consist of a full description of the explorations personally made, and of the objects of antiquity observed, in the order of time, they were brought under my notice.

July 1.-Examination of the Mückle Heog, Unst.

In the Memoirs of the Anthropological Society, vol. i, p. 296, there is a paper by Mr. G. E. Roberts, "On the discovery of large Kist-vaens on the Mückle-Heog, Unst, containing urns of chloritic schist." This communication was but a statement supplied to the author by Thomas Edmonston, Esq., who informed me that he himself was dependent for his information on the workmen, who were engaged in the erection of the flag-staff, on which occasion the sepulchre was discovered. Hence arises the somewhat meagre account of this important place of ancient burial.

The etymology of the words "Mückle Heog" is of great significance. Mückle, great, large. Heog is a Scandinavian word, and is equivalent to the Icelandic "Haug," a sepulchral mound. The Orcadian word "how," a tumulus, is derived from the same source.

The Mückle Heog is one of the heights of a chain of hills, composed of serpentine, running east and west to the north of Balta Voe, and south of Haroldswick Bay. The hill rises abruptly from a level of 100 feet elevation, to form a rugged conical peak, 460 feet above the sea level. A bold escarpment, about 100 feet in height, bounds it on the west, and separates it from Crucifield. The Perrie Heog is in close proximity to it, and separated by undulating ground. The Mückle Heog is 460 feet, and the Perrie Heog 400 feet above high water mark, as determined by me by the aid of the aneroid barometer.

The sepulchral mound occupied the extreme top of the hill,

a cursory examination of which, on the 28th of June, induced us to give up any hope of a return for labour that might be spent upon it. But on the 1st of July I set the labourers to work in removing the enormous accumulation of stones that encumbered, excepting a few square yards around the flag-staff, the top of the hill. The results were the exposure of two semicircular walls on the eastern slope of the hill, running up nearly to the bold escarpment on the west side. The inner wall was distant sixteen feet from the edge of the precipice, and was slightly built of unhewn flattish stones, or slabs. The outer wall was composed of large stones, which either had been rudely dressed into more or less cubical blocks, or selected for their symmetry. It was situated fifteen feet to the outside of the other wall. The space intervening between the two walls was covered with stones, which, until the erection of the flagstaff, had also covered the area within the inner wall.

It was within the inner wall and around it that the skeletons and urns, which were the subjects of Mr. Roberts's paper, were obtained. Apparently there had been no prepared graves; but the bodies, with the urns, were simply laid in the natural hollows and depressions of the serpentine rock, which here appears at the surface in the form of sharp ridges, with intervening furrows. I saw no large slabs, adapted as covers to any graves, among the débris on the hill.

The whole interior space within the wall was thoroughly examined. Portions of skulls of at least two individuals, and a barrow-load of other bones, with fragments of steatite pots, were found; but, from the very disturbed nature of the materials, etc., no positive statement can be made as to their manner of deposition. So, also, as to whether the numerous bones of horse, of fish, and of birds, and the shells of molluscs, found among the débris, were actually in association with the human remains.

As to the latter, great caution must be used; the horse is common and indigenous to the islands; many die owing to the scarcity of food in severe winters, their bodies are left to the ravens, crows, and black-backed gulls; and these birds might easily have been the agents of transporting the fleshy bones to

the crown of the hill, and in this way they may have become mingled among the stones of the cairn. So, also, the occurrence of fish-bones can be easily accounted for,-gulls and other fishing birds carrying their booty to the top. Among the more common molluscan shells, that of the limpet is very frequent among the débris of this and other cairns; the oystercatcher (Hamantopus ostralegus), which lives upon the limpet, may in a like manner have transported the shells to where they are now found. Thus, human agency need not be called into question for the occurrence of the animal remains I have referred to on the tops of hills. I noted on the top of Saxiford, Perrie Heog, Gallows Hill, etc., the same thing.

Greater reliance can be placed on the relation of a stone implement, picked up by Dr. Mitchell, F.A.S.L., on the Mückle Heog, to the human remains buried here.

The implement is a rolled pebble of serpentine rock, of an oblong ovoid form, four and a half inches in length, seven and a half inches in circumference at the larger end, and gradually tapering to five inches at the other. It is slightly contracted in the middle, and can be conveniently grasped by the hand. The larger end is fractured, as if by being used in the form of a pestle; its size seemingly well-adapted for such, and from its weight quite capable of crushing the shells of molluscs, the animals of which may have been an article of food among the possessors of these stone implements.

On the outer side of the inner wall I discovered a series of graves that indicates another mode of burial among these people.

On the outside of the inner wall, I found several flat stones, varying from one and a half to two feet in length, and about nine to twelve inches in breadth. The stone in each case covered a few human bones, principally teeth and phalanges, with a few remains of horse, birds, and fish. The bones were reposing on a slight bed of angular gravel, beneath which was a bed of an inch or so in thickness of a black, stiff, unctuous, clayey substance. This was overlying a bed of red, or yellowish clay two or three inches in thickness, which covers the solid rock,

In every case, there were the same materials and order of superposition observed; the black material in no instance was found extending beyond the confines of the covering stone.

An examination of the human bones prove them to be those of children. The black material is such as I have seen in kists where the body had evidently been burnt and the ashes only preserved; and this substance probably results from the impregnation of the clayey floor of the grave with the oily and decomposed animal matter. In the case of these small graves, it would indicate that the bodies had been burnt on the spot, and the charred remains with the few bones. that had escaped the destructive element had been deposited as I found them.

2nd July. On the top of the Perrie or Little Heog (400 feet), I discovered oblong depressions in the serpentine rock, but they presented no indications of having been used as graves. A single grave, exactly similar to the graves on the outside of the inner wall of the Mückle Heog, I found; beneath the stone were a few fragmentary human bones, indicating a small individual, with a few bones of birds and two teeth of a small horse, overlying a similar series of deposits as in the graves on the neighbouring height.

3rd July. In the gully that separates the Mückle Heog from the Crucifield there is a disturbed tumulus, which went under the title of the Place of Justice. The top of the Mückle Heog, also named the Place of Execution and Hanger Hill, is reached from the former by a flight of rude steps. A tradition prevails that whatever criminal ascended the steps to the Mückle Heog never came down alive. But if an accused, after hearing his sentence, was desirous to appeal to the voice of the people, he tried to escape in a direction that led to a circle of stones on Crucifield; if he could reach that sacred ground in safety his life was preserved.

The tumulus, now a confused heap of stones, contained four kists; three were exposed to view at the time of my visit, the fourth that I discovered was accurately covered by a flat headstone, and was apparently undisturbed, but the grave was