ight bar of I or E in
JACIT can be traced by sight or touch. In this same word, also, the
lower part of the C and the cross stroke of the T is defective. But even
if the inscription had not been read when these letters were more
entire, such defects in particular letters are not assuredly of a kind
to make any palaeographer entertain a doubt as to the two words in which
these defects occur being TVMVLO and JACIT.

[Illustration: Fig. 16. The Cat-Stane, Kirkliston, _from a Photograph_.]

The terminal letter in the third line[140] was already defective in the
time of Edward Lhwyd, as shown by the figure of it in his sketch. (See
woodcut, No. 15.) Sibbald prints it as a K, a letter without any attachable
meaning. Lhwyd read it as an F (followed apparently by a linear point or
stop), and held it to signify--what F so often does signify in the common
established formula of these old inscriptions--F(ILIVS). The upright limb
of this F appears still well cut and distinct; but the stone is much
hollowed out and destroyed immediately to the right, where the two cross
bars of the letter should be. The site of the upper cross-bar of the letter
is too much decayed and excavated to allow of any distinct recognition of
it. The site, however, of a small portion of the middle cross bar is
traceable at the point where it is still united to and springs from the
upright limb of the letter. Beyond, or to the right of this letter F, a
line about half-an-inch long, forming possibly a terminal stop or point
of a linear type, commences on the level of the lower line of the letters,
and runs obliquely upwards and outwards, till it is now lost above in the
weathered and hollowed-out portion of stone. Its site is nearer the
upright limb or basis of the F than it is represented to be in the
sketch of Mr. Lhwyd, where it is figured as constituting a partly
continuous extension downwards of the middle bar of the letter itself.
And perhaps it is not a linear point, but more truly, as Lhwyd figures
it, the lower portion of a form of the middle bar of F, of an unusual
though not unknown type. The immediate descent or genealogy of those
whom these Romano-British inscriptions commemorate is often given on the
stones, but their status or profession is seldom mentioned. We have
exceptions in the case of one or two royal personages, as in the famous
inscription in Anglesey to "CATAMANUS, REX SAPIENTISSIMUS OPINATISSIMUS
OMNIUM REGUM." The rank and office of