name of Picts as being
derived from a system of painting or tattooing the skin, that was in
their time as fashionable among some of our Scottish forefathers, as it
is in our time in New Zealand, and among the Polynesians?

According to Caesar, the Britons wore a moustache on the upper lip, but
shaved the rest of the beard; and the sole stone--fortunately a fragment
of ancient sculpture--which has been saved from the ruins of the old
capital of the Picts at Forteviot, shows a similar practice among them.
But what did they shave with? Were their razors of bronze, or iron, or
steel? And where, and by whom, were they manufactured?

Was the state of civilisation and of the arts among the Caledonians,
when Agricola invaded them, about A.D. 80 or 81, as backward as some
authorities have imagined, seeing that they were already so skilled in,
for example, the metallurgic arts, as to be able to construct, for the
purposes of war,--chariots, and consequently chariot-wheels, long
swords, darts, targets, etc.?

As the swords of the Caledonians in the first century were, according to
Tacitus, long, large, and blunt at the point, and hence in all
probability made of iron, whence came the sharp-pointed leaf-shaped
bronze swords so often found in Scotland, and what is the place and date
of their manufacture? Were they earlier? And what is the real origin of
the large accumulation of spears and other instruments of bronze, some
whole, and others twisted, as if half-melted with heat, which, with
human bones, deer and elk-horns, were dredged up from Duddingston Loch
about eighty years ago, and constituted, it may be said, the foundation
of our Museum? Was there an ancient bronze-smith shop in the
neighbourhood; or were these not rather the relics of a burned crannoge
that had formerly existed in this lake, within two miles of the future
metropolis of Scotland?

Could the deputation inform us where we might find, buried and concealed
in our muirs or mosses, and obtain for our Museum some interesting
antiquarian objects which we sadly covet--such as a specimen or two, for
instance, of those Caledonian spears described by Dion, that had a
brazen apple, sounding when struck, attached to their lower extremity?
or one of those statues of Mercury that, Caesar says, were common among
the Western Druids? or one of the _covini_ mentioned by Tacitus--(for we
are anxious to know if its wheels were of iron or bronze; how these
wheels made, as Caes