h I heard of clubs or
sticks having been substituted. There are found in these islands the two
circles of stones at Stenness, and single standing stones. One of these,
at Swannay in Birsay, is said by tradition to have been raised to mark
the spot where the procession rested when carrying the body of St.

Magnus after his murder in Egilshay in 1110, from that island to
Christ's Kirk in Birsay, where it was first interred. Here is a date and
a purpose. The single standing stones, in accordance with SIR JAMES'S
opinion, and to use nearly his expressions, are said to mark the
burial-places of distinguished men, to commemorate battles and great
events, and to denote boundaries; and these, and still more the circles,
are objects of respect as belonging to ages gone by, but principally
with the educated classes, and there is no superstition remaining with
any. Such a thing as the swathing stone of South Inchkea is not known to
have existed. The stones in the two circles, and the single standing
stones, are all plain; but there was found lately a stone of the
sculptured symbolical class, inserted to form the base of a window in
St. Peter's Kirk, South Ronaldshay, and another of the same class in the
island of Bressay, in Zetland. The first is now in the Museum of
Scottish Antiquaries in Edinburgh; and the Zetland stone, understood to
be very curious, is either there or in Newcastle, and both are forming
the subject of antiquarian inquiry.

W. H. F.

* * * * *

AUTOGRAPHS IN BOOKS.

(_Continued from_ Vol. vii., p. 255.)

The following are probably trifling, but may be considered worth
recording. Facing the title-page to _The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope_,
London, W. Bowyer, for Bernard Lintot, &c., 1717, 8vo., no date at end
of preface, is in (no doubt) his own hand:

"To the Right Honorable the Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, from his
ever-oblig'd, most faithfull, and affectionate servant, ALEX.
POPE."

Cranmer's _Bible_, title gone, but at end, Maye 1541:

"This Bible was given to me by my ffather Coke when I went to
keepe Christmas with him at Holckam, anno Domini 1658. WILL.
COBBE."

Sir William Cobbe of Beverley, York, knight, married Winifred, sixth
daughter of John (fourth son of the chief justice), who was born 9th
May, 1589.

This copy has, before Joshua and Psalms, a page of engravings, being the
"seconde" and "thyrde parte;" also before the New Testame