The manners described in the poems themselves point to a very early state of society. The heroes of Ossian lived by the chase, and had not yet learned the art of tilling the soil. A single detail of much significance, the meaning of which was unknown to Macpherson, may be mentioned here. In a letter to Dr. Blair, dated 2nd October 1764 (Report, p. 36), Lord Auchinleck remarks: In Ossian, "when a hero finds death approaching he calls to prepare his deer's horn, a passage which I did not understand for a good time after 'Fingal' was published, but then came to get it fully explained accidentally. You must know that in Badenoch, near the Church of Alves, on the highway side are a number of Tumuli. Nobody had ever taken notice of these as artificial till Macpherson of Benchar, a very sensible man, under an apprehension of their being artificial, caused to cut up two of them, and found human bones in them, and at right angles with them a red deer's horn above them. These burials plainly have been before Christianity, for the corpse lay in the direction of north and south, not in that of east and west. . . . 'Fingal' was published before any of these tumuli were opened."
This peculiarity of prehistoric burial in Scotland has been independently remarked by later antiquarians. The late Dr. Bryce, of Glasgow High
