ntiquaries of
Scotland a "Notice of the Sculpturing of Cups and Concentric Rings on
Stones and Rocks in various parts of Scotland;" but materials afterwards
so grew on his hands that his original Notice came to be expanded into a
volume of nearly 200 pages, with 36 illustrative plates. His treatment
of this curious subject furnishes a model for such investigations.[5]

Setting out with a description of the principal types of the sculptures,
he investigates the chief deviations which occur. He next classifies the
various monuments on which the sculptures have been observed, as
standing-stones, cromlechs, stones in chambered tumuli, and stones in
sepulchral cists. Another chapter describes their occurrence on stones
connected with archaic habitations, as weems, fortified buildings, in
and near ancient towns and camps, and on isolated rocks and stones.
After a description of analogous sculptures in other countries, there is
a concluding chapter of general inferences founded on the facts
accumulated in the previous part of the volume.

On the occasion of a rapid journey to Liverpool, Sir James Simpson
visited a stone circle at Calder, near that city, and detected the true
character of the sculptures on the stones, a very imperfect note of
which I had recently brought under his notice. An account of this
monument, which he prepared for the Historic Society of Lancashire and
Cheshire, is printed in the Transactions of that body for 1865, and the
following passages are quoted from it:--"Many suggestions, I may
observe, have been offered in regard to the intent and import of such
lapidary cup and ring cuttings as exist on the Calder Stones; but none
of the theories proposed solve, as it seems to me, the hieroglyphic
mystery in which these sculpturings are still involved. They are old
enigmatical 'handwritings on the wall,' which no modern reader has yet
deciphered. In our present state of knowledge with regard to them, let
us be content with merely collecting and recording the facts in regard
to their appearances, relations, localities, etc.; for all early
theorising will, in all probability, end only in error. It is surely
better frankly to own that we know not what these markings mean (and
possibly may never know it), rather than wander off into that vague
mystification and conjecture which in former days often brought
discredit on the whole study of archaeology.

"But in regard to their probable era let me add one suggesti