according to Mr. Westwood (the highest living authority on
such a subject), is "one of the most remarkable contributions to
Archaeology which has ever been published in this or any other country."

"Crannoges"--those curious lake-habitations, built on piles of wood, or
stockaded islands,--that Herodotus describes in lake Prasias, five or
six centuries before the Christian era, constituting dwellings there
which were then impregnable to all the military resources of a Persian
army,--that Hippocrates tells us were also the types of habitation
employed in his day by the Phasians, who sailed to them in single-tree
canoes,--that in the same form of houses erected upon tall wooden piles,
are still used at the present day as a favourite description of dwelling
in the creeks and rivers running into the Straits of Malacca, and on the
coasts of Borneo and New Guinea, etc., and the ruins of which have been
found in numerous lakes in Ireland, England, Switzerland, Germany,
Denmark, etc.;--Crannoges, I say, have been searched for and found also
in various lochs in our own country; and the many curious data
ascertained with regard to them in Scotland will be given in the next
volume of our Society's proceedings by Mr. Joseph Robertson, a gentleman
whom we all delight to acknowledge as pre-eminently entitled to wield
amongst us the pen of the teacher and master in this as in other
departments of Scottish antiquities.

Most extensive architectural data, sketches, and measurements, regarding
many of the remains of our oldest ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland
(including some early Irish Churches, with stone roofs and Egyptian
doors, that still stand nearly entire in the seclusion of our Western
Islands), have been collected by the indomitable perseverance and
industry of Mr. Muir; and when the work which that most able
ecclesiologist has now in the press is published, a great step will
doubtless be made in this neglected department of Scottish antiquities.

In addition, however, to the assiduous collection of all ascertainable
facts regarding the existing remains of our sculptured stones, our
crannoges, and our early ecclesiastical buildings, there are many other
departments of Scottish antiquities urgently demanding, at the hands of
the numerous zealous antiquaries scattered over the country, full
descriptions and accurate drawings of such vestiges of them as are still
left--as, for example:--

I. Our ancient Hill-forts of S