reverential memorials were, at that stage of culture, an impossibility. Nevertheless there yet remains one part of our inquiry to which an answer has not been given. Why should the stones be set up at intervals, and in a circle? For all that our inquiry has proved is that the dead were worshipped at their graves; it does not necessarily answer the more particular question of a peculiar form of grave or burial enclosure. The circular form and the pillared stones set at intervals remain, after every elimination, the only difficulty of the enquiry. Mr Fergusson developed the idea

of the circle from the circular mound, but he could not account for the stones being set at intervals, and not close together. Canon Greenwell suggested, as we saw, that their use was to "fence" in the ghost of the departed. It is a superstition in the Highlands yet that evil spirits can be kept off by drawing a circle round oneself. Another suggestion made is that the number of stones may have had something to do with the number of worshippers, as is said to be the case in the Dekkan. It was also the custom at the Hallowe'en fires for everyone to place a stone in a ring round the fire as they were leaving, and, if by next morning, anything happened to any of the stones, the person who placed it there was fated to meet death or ill during the year. The Arabs still set up stones of witness, whenever they first catch sight of certain holy places. The stones in the circle may have been "witness" stones, or else stones at which sacrifice was made. Yet the regularity of their number, generally ten or a dozen, forbids much hopeful speculation in these lines. Another theory connects the burial circle with phallic worship; the circle itself would answer to the yoni symbol and the menhirs upon it to the linga. The principles of life and of death would thus be worshipped together, which is not an uncommon circumstance. The cup-markings so often met with on burial monuments lend additional weight to this view.

To sum up. Our negative conclusions are, that neither the Celts nor their Druids built these stone circles, nor were they for sun or fire worship, and they were not the foundation either of dwellings or of dismantled mounds. Our positive results are, that the stone circles were built by pre-historic races- -in this country, probably by the Picts; that they are connected with burial, though built independent of mounds and other forms of tomb; that they are also connected with ancestor worship, and that the whole difficulty resolves itself into the question of why they are of circular form and why the stones are set at intervals.

19TH MARCH 1884.

The following were elected members on this date, viz.-Mr Francis Murray, Lentran; and Mr John Mackenzie, Greig Street, Inverness, ordinary; and Mr Ewen Cameron, 28 High Street, apprentice. Mr Duncan Campbell, Inverness, discoursed at some length on the Book of the Dean of Lismore.

26TH MARCH 1884.

On this date Mr Duncan Ross, Hilton, and Mr John Macleod, Myrtle Bank, Drummond, were elected ordinary members. Thereafter, Mr Alexander Macbain, M.A., Inverness, read the following paper on

THE ANCIENT CELTS.

(1) THEIR GENERAL HISTORY.

Three or four centuries before Christ, when the history of Western Europe is slowly emerging from obscurity, we find a people, named the Celts, in possession of the vast extent of territory that stretches from the Adriatic and Upper Danube to the Western Ocean, and embraces the British Isles. The northern boundary of the Celts was the Rhine and Mid-Germany, and they extended on the south as far as Central Spain, and the range of the Apennines in Italy. Contrary to the general tendency of early European nations to move westward, the Celts are then found to be already surging eastward, repelled by the impassable Atlantic; for, as Calgacus said to his Caledonians, there was now no land beyond-nothing save the waves and the rocks. Their history, till the second century before our era, presents little but a series of eastward eruptions-"tumults," the Romans called them, whereby over-populous districts were freed of their surplus population. Now and again they would pour through the passes of the Alps, and in a strong compact body make their way to Tuscany and Mid-Italy, striking terror into every Italian tribe, and into Rome as much as any of the rest. It is, indeed, with a great invasion of the Gauls that authentic Roman history begins, for the Gauls in 390 B.C. took and sacked the town of Rome itself, doubtless destroying all older records of its history. Another great invasion of the Gauls was made into Greece in 280 B.C., in which the temple of Delphi was taken and pillaged; and so compact and well arranged was this body of invaders that they passed

over to Asia Minor, overran it, and after various ups and downs settled finally, about 230 B.C., to the limits of the province of Galatia. These Gauls of Asia Minor are the people whom St Paul addressed in his epistle to the "Galatians." In later times they were called Gallo-Graęcians, from their mixture with Greeks, but they appear to have preserved their language till the fourth century of our era, for St Jerome tells us their dialect was like that spoken by the Treviri of northern Gaul. Their customs and peculiarities of temperament, as we gather these from the historians and from St Paul, were thoroughly "Celtic." From the end of the third century before Christ, the history of the Celtie people is everywhere one of loss; the tide of invasion was then successfully turned against them. "They went to the war, but they always fell;" so sings the last of the Feni, the warrior bard who typifies the fate of his race. The Celts were excellent as invaders, though poor colonisers; but against invasion they were most unsuccessful. The centrifugal tendency so apparent in the race was not permitted to find scope in an enemy's country; but in their own country they could not, from mutual jealousy and selfishness, unite for any length of time against the invader. For instance, the Belgae, instead of keeping banded together against Cæsar, and unitedly repelling him, preferred to return each tribe to their own territories, and there await until he attacked some neighbouring tribe, when they intended to come to their assistance. "Seldom is it," says Tacitus, "that two or three states meet together to ward off the common danger. Thus, while they fight singly, all are conquered." After the first Punic war, the Romans made an effort to subdue their troublesome neighbours in the basin of the Po in North Italy. In the course of four years, from 225 to 222 B.C., the whole country was overrun and converted into a Roman province. But it was only after the second Punic war, and on the final conquest of the Boii in 191, that Gallia Cisalpina became a real Roman province. The Celts of Spain, known better as the Celtiberi-Celts and Iberians-were conquered during the second Punic war, but, being a brave and warlike people, they kept up rebellions, and defied Rome, until, with the fall of Numantia in B.C. 134, they were completely subdued. The Gauls of France were not attacked by the Romans until they had assured their power in the East, in Africa, and in Spain. In B.C. 125 the consul Fulvius Flaccus began the reduction of the Salluvii around Massilia, and in a few years they were subdued, and the Allobroges next attacked. The south of Gaul was by the year 118 B.C. made into a province. Matters, however, remained in this state till the

advent of Julius Cæsar in 58 B.C. He was bold enough to attempt the subjugation of Gaul, and in eight years he accomplished his object. All Gaul south of the Rhine was made into a Roman province, and tribute was exacted from the nearest British tribes. In A.D. 43, the conquest of Britain, commenced by Cæsar, was resumed and carried on until by the year 80 all England and Scotland, as far as the Firth of Forth, were reduced into a Roman province. The Celts of Ireland and Northern Scotland were never reduced by the Romans. Under the sway of the Romans the Celtic dialects of Spain and Gaul gradually gave way before the Latin, though not without leaving their marks on the resulting Romance languages that arose on the ruins of the Roman empire. The Gaulish appears never to have died out in Western France, for between the native speakers of it in the 4th and 5th centuries and the immigrants from Britain, it succeeded in maintaining its ground through every chance and change, and is even now in France the speech of a million and a quarter people-the inhabitants of Britanny. How the Romanised Britons were conquered by the English, and driven into the western corners of the land-Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde, until now only Wales remains a British-speaking people, containing a million people who can speak or use a Celtic speech; how Ireland was conquered by the Anglo-Celts in the 12th century, and the ancient language has been pushed into the West, so that now only 870 thousand can speak and use the Gaelic; how in Scotland the ancient language of Caledonia has been gradually shrinking until only a quarter of a million in the Highlands speak it, and only 310 thousand all over Scotland can speak or use it; and how thus only three and a-half millions of people in Europe speak the Celtic language, which two thousand years ago covered most of Western Europe, all this belongs to the history, not of the ancient, but of the modern Celt.

From the consideration of what history has to say of the Celtic nations, let us pass to what science has proved in regard to Celtic origins and culture. It was well on in this century before the relationship of the Celtic race to the rest of the European races was put on a firm scientific basis, and it is only a generation since that English writers accepted the fact of distant cousinship with the Celt. The sciences to which appeal must be made are those that deal with antiquities, culture, and language. It is really the science of language that has enabled the Celt to take his place within the sacred ring of European kinship; the evidence of words, roots, and inflections has been

too patent and convincing for even the grudging Saxon to reject. With the exception of the Turks, Hungarians, Basques, and Finns with Lapps and Esthonians, the European nations are proved linguistically to be of the same race. Within that extensive family circle must also be embraced the Hindoos, Afghans, Persians, and Armenians; and the whole race so included has been variously named the Indo-European, Indo-Celtic, Indo-Germanic, and the Aryan race. As the last term is the most convenient, it shall be adopted here. It is by a comparison of the vocabularies and grammatical forms of the languages of these various races that scientists have come to the conclusion that, linguistically at least, these nations are descended from a common Aryan stock. Radical elements expressing such objects and relations as father, mother, brother, sister, wife, daughter, daughter-in-law; cow, dog, horse, cattle, ox; corn, mill; earth, sky, water, star; gold, silver, metal; house, door, household, clan, king; god, man, holiness, goodness, baseness, badness; law, right; war, hunting; wood, tree; various kinds of trees, flowers, birds, and beasts; weaving, wool, clothes; honey, flesh, food, and hundreds more, to which may be added the names of spring and summer, moon, sun, the numerals as far as one hundred. The Aryans were high in the barbaric stage of culture barbaric as opposed on the one hand to civilised culture, and on the other to the savage stage. They had regular marriage on the monogamic principle; the position of woman was therefore high; grades of kinship were marked; and, indeed, the idea of "family" was altogether highly developed. The state seems to have been of the patriarchal type an enlarged family in idea; there were kings, nobles, council, and laws. Houses, hamlets, roads or paths, and waggons existed. Sheep, oxen, and all domestic cattle were possessed and named. Agriculture existed, and various kinds of corn, fruits, and trees were known and used. Gold, silver, and copper or bronze were known, but evidently not iron; and implements of war and the chase were made of the metals known-sword, and spear, and plough. Polytheism was the form of religious belief, wherein the powers of nature were worshipped as deities in anthropomorphic form. When or where this nation lived cannot well be known, but the general idea is that it lived over three thousand B.C. in Western Asia. In any case, it split up into many leading branches, variously estimated at seven, eight, and ten. Schleicher and Fick have attempted to show how this process occurred, and to trace the relationship of the various branches among themselves. According to them, the Aryan race first divided into the Asiatic and European groups. The Asiatic sub