Mitchell, not a credulous savant, says: "The
evidence of authenticity in regard to these doubted objects from Dumbuck
is the usual evidence in such circumstances . . . it is precisely the
same evidence of authenticity which is furnished in regard to all the
classes of objects found in the Dumbuck exploration--that is, in regard
to the canoe, the quern, the bones etc.--about the authenticity of which
no doubts have been expressed, as in regard to objects about which doubts
have been expressed." {36a}

Of another object found by a workman at Dumbuck Dr. Munro writes "is it
not very remarkable that a workman, groping with his hand in the mud,
should accidentally stumble on this relic--the only one found in this
part of the site? Is it possible that he was an unconscious
thought-reader, and was thus guided to make the discovery" of a thing
which "could as readily have been inserted there half-an-hour before?"
{36b}

This passage is "rote sarcustic." But surely Dr. Munro will not, he
cannot, argue that Mr. Bruce was "an unconscious thought-reader" when
_he_ "cleared out" the interior of the canoe, and found three disputed
objects "in the bottom."

If we are to be "psychical," there seems less evidence for "unconscious
thought-reading," than for the presence of what are technically styled
_apports_,--things introduced by an agency of supra-normal character,
vulgarly called a "spirit."

Undeterred by an event which might have struck fear _in constantem
virum_, Mr. Bruce, in the summer of 1901, was so reckless as to discover
a fresh "submarine wooden structure" at Langbank, on the left, or south
bank of the Clyde Estuary opposite Dumbarton Castle. The dangerous
object was cautiously excavated under the superintendence of Mr. Bruce,
and a committee of the Glasgow Archaeological Society. To be brief, the
larger features were akin to those of Dumbuck, without the central
"well," or hole, supposed by Dr. Munro to have held the pole of a beacon-
cairn. The wooden piles, as at Dumbuck, had been fashioned by "sharp
metal tools." {37} This is Mr. Bruce's own opinion. This evidence of
the use of metal tools is a great point of Dr. Munro, against such
speculative minds as deem Dumbuck and Langbank "neolithic," that is, of a
date long before the Christian era. _They_ urged that stone tools could
have fashioned the piles, but I know not that partisans of either opinion
have made experiments in hewing trees with stone-headed axe