ious circles formed of
diminishing concentric rings which are found engraved, sometimes on
rocks outside an old aboriginal village or camp, as at Rowtin Lynn and
Old Bewick; sometimes on the walls of underground chambers, as in the
Holm of Papa Westray, and in the island of Eday; sometimes on the walls
of a chambered tumulus, as at Pickaquoy in Orkney; or on the interior of
the lid of a kistvaen, as at Craigie Hall, near Edinburgh, and probably
also at Coilsfield and Auchinlary; or on a so-called Druidical stone, as
on "Long Meg" at Penrith?

Is it true that a long past era--and, if so, at what era--our
predecessors in this old Caledonia had nothing but tools and implements
of stone, bone, and wood? Are there no gravel-beds in Scotland in which
we could probably find large deposits of the celts and other stone
weapons--with bored and worked deer-horns, of that distant
stone-age--such as have been discovered on the banks of the Somme and
the Loire in France? And were the people of that period in Scotland
Celtic or pre-Celtic?

When the first wave of Celtic emigrants arrived in Scotland, did they
not find a Turanian or Hamitic race already inhabiting it, and were
those Scottish streams, lakes, etc., which bear, or have borne, in their
composition, the Euskarian word _Ura_ (water)--as the rivers Urr, Orr,
and Ury, lochs Ur, Urr, and Orr, Urr-quhart, Cath-Ures, Or-well, Or-rea,
etc., named by these Turanian aborigines?

We know that in Iona, ten or twelve centuries ago, Greek was written,
though we do not know if the Iona library possessed--what Queen Mary had
among the sixteen Greek volumes[11] in her library--a copy of Herodotus;
but we are particularly anxious to ascertain if the story told by
Herodotus of Rhampsinitus, and the robbery of his royal treasury by that
"Shifty Lad" "the Master Thief,"[12] was in vogue as a popular tale
among the Scottish Gaels or Britons in the oldest times? The tale is
prevalent in different guises from India to Scotland and Scandinavia
among the Aryans, or alleged descendants of Japhet; Herodotus heard it
about twenty-three centuries ago in Egypt, and consequently (according,
at least, to some high philologists), among the alleged descendants of
Shem; and could any Scottish Turanians, as alleged descendants of Ham,
in the deputation, tell us whether the tale was also a favourite with
them and their forefathers? For if so, then, in consonance with the
usual reasoning on this and other po