Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 53

At least four or five short cists and a possible long cist have been discovered in this area. The new discovery contained a poorly preserved crouched skeleton. The cover slab had fallen in and crushed the bronze armlet which is discussed in some detail. An irregular sandstone block with eight cup marks was found nearby.

These statues, with the accompanying carved stones, were found in August 1909 in the back garden of No. 37 Drummond Place. The two figures, with the stone containing the\r\ncity arms, have been placed within the Old Parliament Hall; while the pediment stone with the open-arched crown surmounted by a cross, and having the date 1636, has been placed over a doorway in the new piazza. The statues had been removed from the Old Parliament Hall in 1824. They are thought to have been sculptured by Alexander Mylne,\r\nwho was born in Perth in 1613.

The sherds were found while digging in an extension of the cemetery and consist of a bearded mask, a segment of the base of a large jug, and a portion of the lip of a similar vessel. The mask appears to have been fairly common on pitchers of the fourteenth century. The second piece of pottery, the segment of the base of a large jar, shows a continuous row of impressed thumb-marks around its edge, and by this feature tends to confirm the fourteenth-century date of the pottery mask. The third object is a portion of the lip of a pitcher of a light-red body coated with a thick lead glaze of deep-green colour and may be of 12th or 13 century. The Bass is a mound, in shape a truncated cone, about 50 feet in height, which occupies a strong position on the right bank of the Ury, close to the southern end of the royal burgh of Inverurie and is classified as a mount-and-bailey castle of Norman type.

The circles referred to are in Aberdeenshire: Wester Echt, Balblair, Gask or Springhill, standing stones of Cullerlie, Balnacraig, and Inchbaire, and Corsedardar Stone; in Kincardineshire: Inchmarlo Lodge, Banchory-Ternan, standing stones of\r\nDurris, Tilquhillie, and Rees of Clune, along with Rees of Clune and Sundayswells ring cairns. At Wester Echt there are only three stones left standing; at South Fornet, Nether Corskie, and Gask only two; and at Balblair only a single stone remains. Not a single one of the circles described is intact; many of them consist of only a few stones, and some have entirely disappeared.

Castlehill Fort was unknown prior to excavation. It is located on a summit of isolated rock surrounded by a stone wall. Traces of a probable building were found inside and artefacts included Samian, iron objects, shale, glass and bronze. Altnock Fort was on the summit of a cliff and was defended by a deep ditch and a stone wall. Artefacts included glass, pottery, bone, worked stone and coins. Coalhill Fort, on the ridge of a small hill had double ditches cut into the rock and a stone wall. The only artefacts were of worked stone.

The ancient and royal burgh of Lanark in the course of its municipal existence, commencing with the reign of David I, has employed seven different seals. The earliest one extant belongs to the fourteenth century; the second and third have been 'assigned respectively to the fifteenth and sixteenth; the fourth to the seventeenth; both fifth and sixth to the eighteenth; whilst the last is the one now in current use. Each of the seals in described in detail.

An account of the brief history of the society based on the discovery of a manuscript which came to light in the Bodleian Library. There is no minute of the gathering at which the Minor Society was originally constituted, however, when it met on 1st February 1783, it was already in being.

Almost all of the armorials are in stone and they almost all come from the sixteenth or early seventeenth century. They include a number which for many years had been hidden beneath the raised floor of the choir of St Magnus' Cathedral and have only recently come to light. The include the Cragy coat on the ancient font now in Stromness Episcopal Church, and one found beneath the floor of the Birsay Parish Kirk, now built into the wall of the vestibule. All the others come from St Magnus Cathedral'. The impression is that arms-bearing in Orkney was on something like the same basis as in Norway; an arbitrary system under which some landowners were "af vaaben" and others were not; the privilege being originally associated with a certain\r\nposition in the Kings or Earl's "hird," and always having remained the subject of special grant or of some kind of sanction. In Scotland the terms " gentleman" and " freeholder" are used synonymously in old statutes, and each member of this class seems to have been expected, as a matter of obligation as much as of privilege, to have the " seale of his armes " ready for use when required.